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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Vintage Sound Queensryche Turned Back The Clock For ‘Hear In The Now Frontier’

Gene Stout Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Queensryche’s new album, “Hear in the Now Frontier,” is lean and raw by the band’s previous standards, but still has an unmistakable gloss.

Released earlier this month on EMI Records, the CD was produced by Peter Collins, who worked on the Seattle rock group’s two most complex albums, the multimillion-selling “Operation: Mindcrime” and “Empire.” The new album made its debut at No. 19 on The Billboard 200 album chart last week.

“It was really material-driven,” lead singer Geoff Tate said of the group’s sixth studio album. “We pulled together the songs we thought would be great for the record and we sent the tape off to Peter. He immediately commented on how stripped-down everything was. The songs were simple and straight-ahead. He liked that sort of direction from us.”

The heavy-rock band then enlisted a new studio engineer, Toby Wright, who favored old-fashioned recording techniques and vintage equipment. Wright had previously worked with Alice in Chains.

“Chris (DeGarmo) and Michael (Wilton) have been collecting vintage guitars for years and really wanted to try them out,” Tate said. “So the whole album has a sort of vintage sound because of these old instruments, amps, mikes and consoles.”

The first half of the album was recorded at Sixteenth Avenue Sound in Nashville, where Collins lives. The second half was completed at Seattle’s Studio Litho, owned by Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard.

Peter “wanted to be close to his family because he’s been traveling a lot this year and we, of course, wanted to be home and close to our families as well,” Tate said. “So we compromised and split the project down the middle and did part of it there and part of it here.”

The band’s longtime association with Collins, a British-born producer who has worked with Rush and Gary Moore, has taken the group to Nashville before.

Peter likes the area because there’s a studio every block and really good session musicians, Tate said. “There’s also a small British community there. It’s turning into sort of a cosmopolitan city.”

Though “Operation: Mindcrime” and “Empire” were concept albums, “Hear in the Now Frontier” wasn’t intended to be - until Tate and DeGarmo noticed a common theme in their new songs.

“Sign of the Times,” the album’s first single, is a three-part song about violence in school, religious intolerance (as with last year’s church burnings in the South) and one of the band’s favorite subjects - greed in the government.

“It’s a song about signposts, about what’s going on in America and why can’t we get it together and be more tolerant of other people’s beliefs,” Tate said.

An avid reader, Tate is fascinated with books on anthropology, evolution, Eastern mysticism and Western science.

“There’s a song on the new album called ‘Spool’ that sort of talks about (the evolution of language),” he said. “It was inspired by a couple of different authors I’ve been reading lately who write about languages and how they define our civilization.”

Signed to EMI Records in 1983 after recording a four-track demo with the help of Kim and Diana Harris of Bellevue, Wash.’s Easy Street Records, Queensryche has always resisted categorization and strived to steer clear of “the boxes.’

“We’ve been in the business for 15 years and we’ve seen all kinds of fads come and go,” Tate said. “It’s humorous to watch the media focus on a certain thing and then in a couple of years, it’s gone.”

Queensryche - Tate, DeGarmo, Wilton, Eddie Jackson and Scott Rockenfield - will begin a summer tour in late June, with a possible Northwest date in July.

This year’s touring show, like the new album, will be somewhat stripped down. “We’re video junkies and we like to dabble in that medium,” Tate said. “So I think we’ll continue to have a lot of visuals.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IN CONCERT Queensryche will perform at The Gorge at 8 p.m. on June 21. Tickets are $37.50, $27.50 and $19.50, available only at Ticketmaster outlets. For locations, call (509) 928-4700; for credit-card purchases, call (206) 628-0888.

This sidebar appeared with the story: IN CONCERT Queensryche will perform at The Gorge at 8 p.m. on June 21. Tickets are $37.50, $27.50 and $19.50, available only at Ticketmaster outlets. For locations, call (509) 928-4700; for credit-card purchases, call (206) 628-0888.