Operation: Mindcrime: The Key

The Operation continues.

You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

After a very protracted divorce from Queensrÿche that left him with the rights to their best-known album, singer Geoff Tate has now taken that album’s title for his new band as he releases the first of a trilogy of albums that seeks to answer the conundrum: “What are the implications of changing the world?” You’ve been warned.

The plot may be the expected labyrinthine affair (mindcriminals would accept no less), but the delivery is lively and engaging, with the vocals set against a variety of strident grungy grooves.

With Tate now in full charge, he’s able to dictate the pace of the album as it darts back and forth between various strands of the story, without disrupting the overall momentum.

However, Tate’s control never gets oppressive. Indeed, he is relaxed enough to even bring in other vocalists to dilute the density of the plot.

Hugh Fielder

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.