Rocktrospectiva: The Acclaimed Masterpiece "Empire" Turns 35

Released on 4 September 1990 "Empire" was the fourth full-length studio album by the US heavy metal band Queensrÿche. The album is Queensrÿche's most commercially successful release, reaching triple-platinum status. Spawning four singles, "Empire", "Best I Can", the primary single, the power ballad "Silent Lucidity", who reached number 1 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks and number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and finally "Jet City Woman". Empire has received generally positive reviews from critics since its release.

The year was 1990, and Queensrÿche released this acclaimed masterpiece between opera and art rock and thought to enter straight into mainstream formula radio, even the MTV praised the band and the album in which Geoff Tate and guitarist Chris DeGarmo are the remarkable points, but also the band worked as a unique ensemble to released a magnificent record, capable to pleased mainstream audiences and also their most original fans, while the rest of the hair bands remains in their typical clichés, this band instead were several light years from difference. 

A sound between metal and progressive rock, the remarkable tracks are "Della Brown" something in the grounds of Pink Floyd, never dismissed DeGarmo colosal and rhytmical sound and tha fade out with seagulls at the end, the remarkable "Another Rainy Night (Without You)", beautiful half time with a magnificent sound concept, great verses and intense riff, then the masterpiece "Silent Lucidity" is the delicate track, a class apart in their own with orchestral arrangements by Michael Kamen to give life to one of the most beautiful and intense heavy metal tunes ever released, and solemn Tate on vocals nearly reaching an operistic style.  

Definitely DeGarmo was on his game at the highest compositive level, the album is full of voice effects and sounds that gave the album a truly proper aura a unity, Peter Collins was the producer who achieved with proficiency the chorus line giving the album a simplicity, from the opening track "Best I Can" the listener can truly understand how huge was this record, "The Thin Line" was another thing, half-time power, playing with effects and the guitar gave space the rest of the instruments, beauty and complex in all levels.  

"Jet City Woman" was another big hit, a beautiful inmortal line and with a creppy vocals courtesy of Tate, another piece "Resistance" that in the end had a certain The Cult style, "Hand Of Heart" was an ode to accesibility with truly class, "One And Only" was another good one and probably one of the most forgettable of this masterpiece record, and then the closer "Anybody Listening?" with a relaxed ambient and fine acoustics, achieved to transmited feeling and emotion with those waves and seagulls effects that travelled with the listener until the end. 

The album achieved critical acclaimed due its  progressive metal riffs, calling them "tuneless bombast", and the dire nature of the lyrics, full of huge quality that really set the band apart off the mainstream metal at the time, a fantastic album ahead of its time, with an intense and real singer surrounded by a fantastic band who provided a celestial class on every track.

 

Empire Track List: 

 

1. Best I Can

2. The Thin Line

3. Jet City Woman

4. Della Brown

5. Another Rainy Night (Without You)

6. Empire

7. Resistance

8. Silent Lucidity

9. Hand On Heart

10. One And Only

11. Anybody Listening?