Take Cover

Editors’ Notes Queensryche aren’t the first to come to mind when considering bands likely to record an album of covers. Their high-concept art-metal never showed a lighter, playful side. In essence, though their eclecticism is refreshing and surprising, this is still a very serious, methodical group who approach their reinterpretations with the same fine attention to detail that their fellow contemporaries Def Leppard applied to their album of covers, 2006’s Yeah!. A live version of U2’s “Bullet the Blue Sky” is a ten minute runaway train of guitar fireworks and rhythmic sophistication that transforms U2’s tune into a heavy metal anthem and leaves the original sounding rather subtle and slightly barren. Elsewhere, the band works less radically. Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine” and Black Sabbath’s “Neon Nights” fit comfortably within the group’s sound. The political fire of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Almost Cut My Hair” click naturally with the band’s own rebel stance against faceless national oppression. And their cover of the Police’s “Synchronicity II” simply rocks.  File under pleasant surprises.