Q2K

09/14/1999 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Neal Weiss

When Queensryche first lumbered into the spotlight in the '80s, their proggish sloth rock fit in well enough among the Iron Maidens, Bon Jovis, and Metallicas of the day. A few years later, when Nirvana redefined the rules, they again found a comfy zone of sorts, if only because they were rockers from the state of Washington. They even eventually stripped down their sound to the requisite grunge basics with 1997's day-late/ dollar-short Hear In The Now Frontier, even if their link to punk rock--a key aesthetic to the flannel nation--was about as real as Pamela Lee's upper torso.

But Q2K, the band's seventh studio release, demonstrates that Queensryche's place in 1999 makes as much sense as a Backstreet Boys appearance on the WWF Smackdown. Sure, hard rock is back, but this is not your burnout uncle's musical wankage anymore. The crop-of-the-moment (Korn, Limp Bizkit, etc.) is all about metal boys with hip-hop dreams--rapid-fire riffs, rhythms, and raps. The problem is, when Queensryche muscles a song like "One Life," a plundering tune that could be the soundtrack to a day in the life of the South American three-toed sloth, it exposes the band as the out-of-step arena artistes that they are.

And that's okay. Thank the rawk gods that Queensryche doesn't try and play the funk-metal game. The idea of vocalist Geoff Tate trying to tweak his monster voice (part-Hagar/ part-Goth/ plenty of Spinal Tap) into something that could throw down some rhymes is a really ugly, even pathetic, one. On Q2K, Queensryche simply does what it knows how to do: churn out lots of thick, arty riffs and tones that are sure to please those fans who have banged heads and smacked bongs to their epic assaults in the past.