Queensrÿche - Neue Regel
WARNING, major unedited ramble incoming. Love it or leave it!:
I've known about this band for years and years. They're prog metal giants, so how could I not? But, while I've given them a listen here and there, I've never really connected with their music. Part of that is because of Tate going by that particular "yelping" style of singing that several prog and thrash band vocalists did back then.
Like with most things, there's exceptions. For the second time in this thread, I want to bring up Flotsam & Jetsam. I quite dig the album where this song is from
(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxVOnNVhxwY), despite the vocalist going for that exact style of singing.
If I may be allowed to go on a tangent here, that specific vocal style was always a bit weird to me. I generally like singersto be credibly expressing some real,
relatable emotions or states of mind.
This Geoff Tate style "yelping" thing is... a bit odd to say the least. It seemed to downright dominate some avenues of metal at a certain point in time, but I never really connected with it. James Labrie (of Dream Theater fame) is the main bad guy in this story, since he took this vocal style to an extreme, where absolutely NO LINE HE EVER SUNG could possibly register as being truly "felt". He always comes off as being fake to the maximum possible degree. I'm wise to the fact that most vocalists have to pretend to some degree, but that's not really the issue. I'm okay with knowing that the singer is acting, but I want that acting to be convincing. That's the difference.
To me, Tate and his luminaries are B movie actors, acting in films that could benefit from something more real (or at least a convincing lie (which is how actress Juliette Lewis once descdribed acting in an interview: It's not hard. You just have to lie.)) Now, for sure, B-movie acting can be great. I ****ing adore Brad Dourif in the cult movie classic Spontaneous Combustion. That's B-movie acting, but with a heavy load of energy and charisma. Geoff Tate doesn't quite pull that off.
He's not an active detriment to this music, but apart from having good vocal range, I'm not really sure why he's so adored by prog metal heads. He's better than James LaBrie.
Let's leave it at that.