Queensryche’s next album is starting to sound like the band’s early records, according to the people writing it. On the Oct. 22 episode of SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk, singer Todd La Torre said “the new stuff sounds like old-school” Rage for Order and The Warning, the band’s 1986 and 1984 albums. Guitarist Michael Wilton added: “This is gonna be a really good album.” There is no title, release date or single yet.
Queensryche Writing in Small Groups
According to Blabbermouth’s transcript, the band has stopped trying to write with all five members in one room. Guitarists Mike Stone and Wilton went to producer Chris “Zeuss” Harris’s place for several sessions and recorded new ideas there. Stone and bassist Eddie Jackson also did sessions with Zeuss. “Sometimes when everybody’s involved … it can stump things because everyone has 10 ideas,” La Torre said.
The music is mostly written, and now the work is on La Torre’s side. “I have a ton of songs to write lyrics and melodies to. So a lot of it’s on me right now,” he said. He also said he doesn’t write on the road: “There’s no way I can force creativity. My ears need a break.”
Wilton described his own writing the same way he did decades ago. “When I write, I’m old school. I still write like when I did when I was in my 20s, and it starts with the riff,” he said, calling that “the blueprint of even the next” album.
A Concept Tied to the First Record
The Rage for Order comparison isn’t new. In a July interview with Metal-Rules.com, La Torre said the material sounds “more like the EP, Warning and Rage for Order, maybe with a little newer flavor.” In the same interview he said the album will be “based around a concept that happens on the first album but is never talked about again” in the band’s history. He also ruled out another Operation: Mindcrime chapter: “We don’t have any interest in that.”
La Torre didn’t say which part of the 1983 EP the concept comes from. He said the songs won’t run straight into each other like a rock opera, and that the story could carry on past one album.
Why It Is Taking a While
The album will follow 2022’s Digital Noise Alliance. Wilton put the delay down to the touring schedule. “Gone are the days where bands have six months or even three months where they can just concentrate on an album,” he said. He added that the band has asked its booking agents to “chill out” so it can finish the record, and he confirmed: “This is our last album on Century Media.”
Earlier this year, Wilton told Finland’s Kasarin Lapset that the band likes to have 15 to 20 songs to choose from and was “probably on the 13th idea,” according to Blabbermouth. Zeuss also produced Condition Hüman (2015), The Verdict (2019) and Digital Noise Alliance.
La Torre laid out the near-term calendar: one more show in Washington, three weeks at home, then a short European run in December. The current lineup is La Torre, Wilton, Jackson and Stone, with Casey Grillo on drums. Grillo has filled in for original drummer Scott Rockenfield since 2017.
The San Diego Connection
The band last made SDMETAL’s pages in 2024, when we covered Queensryche’s intimate Sycuan show. No Southern California dates tied to the new album have been announced. Until there’s a release date, the best guide to the new Queensryche music is what La Torre and Wilton have said: riff-first songs that, in their words, sound like the band’s first records.
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