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Metal band fails to reign over remakes

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by Steve Lampiris

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

It's pretty safe to assume that when one reacts with "Why?" when told that such-and-such band has a covers album due out that it's never a good thing. Such is the case with Queensrÿche's new album, Take Cover. There seems to be no good reason — for that matter, any reason at all — why Queensrÿche has put this collection in the musical marketplace. Sadly, the album is a rather cohesive argument for this truth.

Just because you can play a cover does not necessarily mean you should record and release one — or, obviously, 11. This could not possibly be more true for Take Cover. The main fault of this collection is the simple fact that Queensrÿche takes each song — the track list spans quite a few genres — and puts them through the prism of the band's tried-and-true sound of prog-metal. This route inherently leads to problems due to the fact that, of the 11 songs, only one — Queen's "Innuendo" — is in any way fit for a progressive sound.

Perhaps mercifully, the worst songs arrive early in the Take Cover. Opening the album is Queensrÿche's take on the haunting Pink Floyd classic "Welcome to the Machine." This song works well for the band — if you can ignore the glaring irony of the way it is played here. The song itself discusses Floyd's disgust with the music industry, hence the vocal effects, the very somber, depressing tone of the song, and its overall sparseness. Queensrÿche, however, tries to make the song as grandiose as possible, thus negating the very message of the song being played.

Suffering the same fate are Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" and the O'Jay's "For the Love of Money." The former lacks any of the original's subtlety, substituting its folksy chorus for an over-hyped howl-a-thon. The latter just plain sucks because no one can possibly funk-ify prog-metal.

Oddly enough, however, it is the songs that, on paper should not work, that actually do. To wit, "Heaven on Their Minds," originally from "Jesus Christ Superstar," is a perfect example of lifting a musical theatre-style song and placing it into the progressive/power metal sound. The instrumentation is perfect, as is Geoff Tate, whose falsetto is suited perfectly to belt out those high notes needed to sing musicals. This is a rare highlight (used loosely here) found on this album, along with the surprisingly fun version of Black Sabbath's "Neon Knights" and Peter Gabriel's "Red Rain," which successfully turns an avant-garde pop tune into an Iced Earth-esque singalong.

The album ends, however, on arguably the disc's worst song, U2's "Bullet the Blue Sky." The original four-minute anthem becomes a live, 10-minute sonic assault, including guitar feedback complete with a spoken word soliloquy that is presumably about George W. during which Geoff actually states to the audience, "I gotta tell ya about this dream I keep having." Hey Geoff, your last name is not King.

As atrocious as this record is, there are two positive results. First, this can always be used as an example of how not to record a covers album — or, why cover albums should not be done at all. Second, the album cover of Take Cover is perfect: the entire band wears gas masks. I would wear one too if I had just recorded this because it reeks. Take cover indeed.

1 out of 5 stars

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Anonymous (November 17, 2007 @ 11:41pm):

This album is fantastic. It was a fun project for the band to do. No need to be so critical over a covers album. And the Bullet the Blue Sky cover was a live performance in 1999, before George W. was in office.

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