While times have changed and their audience has shrunk from its heyday, Queensryche's capacity to entertain a rock-loving crowd has not diminished in the slightest.
The Seattle fivesome played the E Center Friday night to a somewhat small but especially raucous, loyal audience who lapped up all the considerable energy the band could produce.Trying to promote their ninth album, "Q2K," the setseemed designed to introduce as much of the new material as possible while still including enough of the group's staples so that self-dubbed "Rycheheads" would be satisfied.
The stage was relatively simple with two of the group's batlike triple-pronged symbols hanging on the black backdrop with interior lighting. The stage lights were all contained in an arch that spanned the five performers and splashed green, purple and blue cones of light on each of the musicians.
"Revolution Calling," on the intelligent 1988 breakthrough album "Operation: Mindcrime," opened the show and served notice that the evening would indeed be a time-spanning affair and not just an "our-latest-album" promotion.
In fact, the Mindcrime disc, probably the group's magnum opus, served as the backbone of the show with no less than seven of its 15 songs making its way into the live set including "Spreading The Disease," "I Don't Believe In Love" and "The Needle Lies."
Vocalist Geoff Tate demanded attention from the get-go with his clean, almost pop-star appearance, and his operatic-trained voice that at times soared to the highest pitched screams and at other times dropped into the audio basement.
His highs and lows played the perfect foil for one another giving him multiple "voices" in his first-person narrative songs like "Damaged" and the outstanding rendition of "Speak." In the later tune especially, but throughout the performance, Tate had the ability to become two separate singers, greatly enhancing the theatrical impact of the tunes.
Tate attracted attention even when he wasn't singing, as he half-acted, half-danced out the lyrics of each song, at times even crawling or rolling on the floor. True fans adored him of course, but his stage antics were at times almost bizarre.
Songs from the newest disc included "Liquid Sky," and "Falling Down" both driving rock numbers that grooved well enough to keep the crowd entertained.
doubleDrive opened the show and proved themselves very capable musicians and entertainers. They played a speedy, heavy, thumping set but with a bit of an eerie tone, calling to mind Alice In Chains on musical steroids.