Queensryche Album Discussion Volume 3: Rage for Order

ORIGINAL: omnidrums

If you don't know about the "three tiers of Rage For Order" you are in for a good read.  Understanding this concept will help you enjoy the album even more.  Check this out: http://www.breakdownroom.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4

 
Wow...this album is a lot deeper than it appeared. Thanks for the link.

The album is basically metaphore for media driven, soul less society, and very much a precurser to OM. Every song says something about either opressed knowledge, or opressed desire...or a manipulation of the two. All the songs also connect to either the robot(screaming in digital, I Will Remember), or vampire (London, Infrared)... that sort of thing.

The idea of Yellow Journalism and being fed a premeasured line of news is prevelant, and the idea of all these opressing and manipulating forces confusing any knowledge of right or wrong. Every character is similarly confused about his own identity, desires, and purpose. And every character in some way cannot have what he wants, or is rebelling, even violent to get it.

It's not usually thought of as a concept album, but I'll always believe that it is, and I'll always believe that the themes that are prevailing throughout, are the very social themes that popped up in OM. Whatever caused them to write RFO, made up the issues of OM.

Mindcrime is my fave, but Rage is a VERY close second.

I first heard it after I had owned Empire, Mindcrime, and Promised Land. I found a cassette of it at a Pawn Shap in late 95, early 96, and put it in the player as I left... The chorus of Shadows kicked in and I was like... Oh YEAH! lol The album just kicked my butt from start to finish. Especially The Wisper intro, London, Nue Regal, I Will Remember... I couldn't believe how thick it sounded orchestrally despite the dated production quality. I say dated... if it sounded like A Night At The Opera, Hysteria, or something else equally as rediculously well produced, it wouldn't... but, it's a bit thin even for the time. The arrangements, and vocal layers totally save it though, and it is cleaner overall than even OM(which is lost in too much reverb). It just needed more warmth, that the analog machines of the time should have been able to produce.

I'm reading the three tiers now....

I was very into The Warning, so when RFO came out, I was like WTF? You have to remember the first time seeing those outfits!!!! I liked it, but I'll tell you, this album gets better with every year that goes by. It's a Prog Metal classic, and I'd be hard pressed to find something more original from that time period..
I am gonna listen to it today.
I don't have time to go into each song. I have enjoyed reading what everyone has written.

Slightly off topic, there was a thread on the DT board debating PL and O:M, and I can't beleive the love that PL gets. I just haven't "got it" I guess.

Anyway RFO is neck and neck with Warning for my fave QR album.

I love Promised Land. Every song... even Disconnected.  The last song in particular is a masterpiece.

Of course, I also really liked HEar...

ORIGINAL: Bogie
If someone could tell me what the hell Geoff Tate says at the end of I Am I, I'd love to know.    (______ and wonders, "what now?")

I've always thought it was "one often wonders, what now?"

Thanks for posting the three tiers thing. I'm going to read that tonight.

I also remember when this album came out. I was in high school and metal was the absolute shit. I had been fan since the EP came out and was really looking forward to the album. It blew me away from the first listen. The liner photos were a bit extreme and definitely caused some discussion because at that time. At least for me and my group of friends, there was a very sharp divide between (what we considered to be) "true" metalheads (Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth, Queensryche, Maiden etc.) and the "poser" crowd that were into metal because it was popular and thought Cinderella was fucking metal. QR looked overly glam at that time, and through our adolescent minds, we thought "What the fuck are the wearing? Look at their HAIR!". But the music still kicked ass so it wasn't that big of a deal.

I feel very lucky to have grown up when metal was at the forefront of music. I saw Randy Rhoads with Ozzy as my first concert in 1982, about two months before he died. I saw Metallica with Cliff about three months before he was killed. Seeing bands like Metal Church, Anthrax, Overkill, Megadeth, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond, Slayer and Metallica in their prime was awesome. We obviously didn't know it at the time, but we were witnessing metal at it's peak.

Sorry for getting off topic.

NP: Surgical Strike

No weakness, start to finish (although Surgical Strike isn't a personal fave). Outstanding album, definitely one of the big four QR albums where everything just "clicked". So many bands were influenced by the sound QR achieved here, it deserves to be up there with the best sellers. The only thing that's a little offputting is that it seems to be mixed really low - while this makes for great dynamics, it just sounds quiet, and IMO it could have handled quite a bit of compression without compromising the sound, to bring the levels up a bit. I dunno if there's a remaster?

ORIGINAL: mesavox

I love Promised Land. Every song... even Disconnected. 

Why "even Disconnected"? I think it's a work of genius in terms of the way it all fits together. Definitely one of the best songs on the album IMO (and similarly, I love that album).

ORIGINAL: Spacehog

I dunno if there's a remaster?

Just read the thread man...

Yes....there is a remaster, and it is well worth the purchace price.    There are four bonus tracks, of which two are "meh", one is interesting and one is .     (that is, IMHO of course)

But the sound on the album by itself has VASTLY improved.
 
 
BTW....a BIG thank you to the guy that posted the YouTube stuff of QR from the RFO tour.    GREAT stuff.
 
Did anybody get a chance to hear the original version of GGCTY that I posted?    I thought it was pretty cool.

The other cool part about the remaster, and perhaps the most important part of the remaster, is that it finally prints the lyrics to the bridge between the guitar solo and the last chorus of The Killing Words.  That last little part is not included on any of the other releases (The "now the wireless in my hand is ringing" section).

Yes! i always thought it could have been a great vampire concept album spanning the centuries from 20th century London to a future time as in Screaming In Digital.Great line...`Poets line in a rhyme of silence,gathered from the winter air`

ORIGINAL: romdrums

The other cool part about the remaster, and perhaps the most important part of the remaster, is that it finally prints the lyrics to the bridge between the guitar solo and the last chorus of The Killing Words.  That last little part is not included on any of the other releases (The "now the wireless in my hand is ringing" section).

 
Better sound and full lyrics...now I have to buy it   I never understood why those lyrics were missing and the level of the mix really needed a push

I just downloaded the "Rage for Queens 87" bootleg yesterday and I'm just amazed by it...Geoff is honestly one of the greatest singers, metal or elsewhere. The high note he nails near the end of "No Sanctuary" is just unbelievable. It's available on dime and I would say any fan of this album should hear it. The audio quality of the recording is also phenomal.

Bringing this back from the dead here, but I was just reading an analysis of this album and it mentions a mini-story contained within five songs. This is the article:
 

By 1986, with the release of Rage For Order, Queensryche decided to eliminate gothic-themed songs and create a second full-length album divided between attempts at radio-friendly singles like Walk in the Shadows and Gonna Get Close to You and a mini-conceptual set of five songs within the album:

1. Surgical Strike
2. Neue Regel
3. Chemical Youth (We are Rebellion)
4. Screaming in Digital
5. I Will Remember

The two year gap between albums served the songwriters well in crafting profound songs that continue to speak about the dark side of technology. The depth and vision of the tales told are accelerated not only lyrically but sonically as well. Refined production greatly enhanced this set of songs which become potent omens of tomorrow.

Surgical Strike
Queensryche could have never guessed six years after this song was written, the Gulf War would frequently refer to "surgical strikes" by "smart missiles" programmed to destroy targets.

"It's lonely in the field
That we send our fighters to wander
They leave with minds to steel
It's their training solution
We've programmed the way
It leads us to order
There's no turning back."

War has turned into near-bloodless operations executed by pilots quoted as saying "it felt like a video game." As in the song, assessment was not by humans, but by machines peering through a camera lens. With the aid of supermachines, man's language about war radically changes into terms about "surgery," "collateral damage" and "target-rich environments."

Once dehumanizing language begins, the actions are certain to follow, and nearly impossible to halt. A bloody, terrible war - as all wars are and should be remembered, for our own sake - is reduced to a medical procedure like cutting out cancer. The disease is war, its symptoms deadly technology, the cure - human contact and understanding.

Neue Regel
A clever anthem to "New Order" - that historical quest to create an utopian society. You do not need to be a good student of history to know every attempt at establishing new order has failed. Quite simply, the search for a new order is a fool's errand. How can imperfect people develop a perfect governing system for imperfect people? One can proclaim his group "superior," but we know what follows after that fantasy.

Neue Regel is the theoretical framework forged to bring a semblance of logic - that goes that word again! - to lighten the burden of the crimes and punishments ultimately necessary to implement a Utopia. Bottom line: there's nothing "new" to new order; it's merely semantic window dressing designed to disguise murder and madness.

"I will light the way for us to find
Order of a new kind
Join us on the stay the road is mine
Poets line in a rhyme of silence
Gathered from the winter air
Warms the children's eyes they see
The time is near for the signs."

Chemical Youth (We Are Rebellion)
In the first song of the mini-conceptual set, Surgical Strike, military operations destroy "enemy" targets. In Neue Regel, a philosophy is fastened to justify and guide future operations as the new society takes shape. By the third song, Chemical Youth (We Are Rebellion), a rebellion is brewing among the youth who finally realize:

"if we don't stand together
we stand to lose the future."

The youth understand their present circumstances all too well: technology has been warped into a religion, eventually mutating into a digital dictatorship. And though born in a computer-operated generation, the first to pervert machines are not the youth, but the elders of society. Tired, bitter old men feeling their mortality seize power through machines only to have machines seize power from them. The Youth are the last hope of every generation - but there's danger....

Screaming in Digital
The supreme danger the rebellion faces is infiltration of the rebellious youth ranks by digital personality transplantation. A deadlier from of brain-washing that turns resistance fighters into collaborators. Machines have studied humanity well by replacing biological and emotional fatherhood with silicon parentage; one's thoughts, feelings and dreams are under their control. Humanity continues to resist:

"I'm not your slave
You can't control my emotions
No Father
Please let me keep learning
Can't you see I'm human
Can't you tell
I'm not your slave
Oh Father no
Please don't keep me from dreaming
Oh can't someone hear
No one can hear when you're
Screaming in digital."

The concession that machine is "father" and human "son" has already taken hold. The conversion is nearly complete.

I Will Remember
"There's a thought that fills your mind
A vision of a time
When knowledge was confined
And then we wonder how machines
Can steal each other's dreams
From points that are unseen - it's real."

The resistance lost the battle to regain the planet for humanity. This song reflects how the chaos started. It is a song to lament a civilization's demise. A song before igniting a nuclear missile meant to end machine domination and also whatever is left of humanity. The star that came tonight.

Rage For Order ends with people choosing suicide over slavery. Once upon a time mankind was threatened with extinction by way of nuclear exchange. Yesterday communism threatened democracy. Now we face environmental disasers no less hideous than nuclear warfare. And free-market democracies are saddled with spiritual rot that transforms humans into consumers knowing the price of everything and value of nothing.

Music, books, and a good play are still unifying forces seeking to reach out and remind us of the consequences of ruling a fragile planet with a heart of stone. As fans of Queensrÿche we should sing personal song of I Will Take Action or I Will Give a Damn. Otherwise, I Will Remember and a couple of crumbling pyramids is all this Earth will have to offer to our galactic neighbours in the not-too-distant future. You know the warning. Take hold.

 
This album is just mind-blowing in every sense of the word. Some of the deepest lyrics ever written.

BUMP
 
Someone want to give me a hand over at DTF?   We're doing a "survivor" (voting off least favorite songs until only one remains) and the mad fools are about to vote off Neue Regal as the *THIRD WORST* song on the album!!   
 
London and Screaming in Digital are both in close running...   I can't stand to see either one of them go, but ANYTHING is better than seeing NEUE REGAL (the best song on the album) go so low.    As much as it pains me, I think London should be the sacrificial lamb.     (if it were up to me, Walk in the Shadows would be gone...)

 I've always thought Chemical Youth is worst song. I always skip it. It was even a single wasn't it? Neue Regal probably is the best song.

Yaaay, you're doing Queensryche albums now.  Splendid!  :D
 
Here's my own notes:
 
Walk in the Shadows:  Aside from having one of the most memorable guitar riffs in prog metal, the real classic QR moment on this track is the dual solos.  This is a facet of the 'Ryche that has waned to the point of absence in recent years, and it provided a lot of je ne sais quois the their music.  It made the music interesting and powerful.
 
I Dream in Infrared: For me, it's that moment during the second verse when the guitars harmonize with Geoff using feedback that makes this song for me.  As for the title, rumor had it that most of the songs had something to do with vampires.  
 
The Whisper: I only got into this song fairly recently. I still don't see it as the tour de force that other fans seem to.  
 
Gonna Get Close to You: This and Surgical Strike are my least favorite tracks on the album.  I used to love this track, but repeated plays don't do it any favors.  It's one of those tracks that I can't stomach that much anymore.
 
The Killing Words: God, I love this song.  Especially after my first gf and I broke up, this track was one of my many sources of solace.  That bridge verse is so powerful, and Geoff's vocals really embody all the pain that it should for a song like this.
 
Neue Regel: The vocal phrasing on this track is so strange.  But yes, this is one of QR's strongest tracks.  As it stands, the work on this piece was one of the first that helped me understand what progressive music is.  Rockenfield, in particular, stands out for me on this track.  That china cymbal makes the track.
 
Chemical Youth (We Are Rebellion): A lot of people don't seem to like this track.  Personally, I love it.  I have no idea what "the wave of eighties is number three" means, but that main guitar riff is VERY prog.  
 
Screaming in Digital: I don't personally feel that there are as many "studio notes" as you seem to think there are.  I'm not a singer, at least at Geoff's caliber, but I can hit the notes on this one without a problem.  I also don't feel that it's difficult to follow, especially after some of the DT tracks we've had.  I love this track, though.  Computers developing awareness was a theme QR seemed to enjoy exploring early on, and it contributed to their sound, I think.  
 
All in all, Rage was one of the first prog albums I really got into.  After hearing Mindcrime and Empire first, this album did not immediately register with me.  It took time to grow and some tracks grew more quickly than others.  The more I listened to it, though, the more I couldn't stop listening to it.  Behind Promised Land (my favorite QR album), Rage duels with Mindcrime as my second favorite QR record.

I am closing in on 1,000 albums in my collection......from bands like Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, Megadeth, Genesis......you name it. And this is easily in the top 20, maybe even top 10. My favorite QR album, followed by Empire, then OM.

Goldenfoxx


Yaaay, you're doing Queensryche albums now.  Splendid!  :D

 
 
I'm glad you're enjoying it!!    (psst...I bumped it...this thread is 5 years old)

BTW...I still need the help of anyone who happens to be a DTF person, and a Neue Regal fan. 
 
The thread is here.
 
http://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=30878.msg1214479#new
 
And no this is NOT to start any kind of war.   If anything, I'm just hoping to bring it to the attention of anyone who is already a DTF member, who is also a QR fan, and was previously unaware of the threads existence.   Just a friendly game that I'm trying to recruit support for.

Love these threads...as I've said before...just re-read this whole thing...might have to spin this tonight.

I've spun RFO twice today. I mentioned this in the Van Halen thread earlier today:
 
Geoff Tate, in his prime, had the best voice in rock/metal. Yes, better than Halford, Dickinson, Dio. Better than Plant, Mercury, Tyler, Hagar.....whomever.

Agreed!

jammindude
I'm glad you're enjoying it!!    (psst...I bumped it...this thread is 5 years old)

Oh yeah, I love lending my opinions to your threads.  Feel free to bump other Ryche review threads, as far as I'm concerned.  :D