Geoff Tate has played Infinity Hall in Hartford three times since 2022, each time saw a very different show and band lineup. In 2022 he played the Queensryche classics Rage For Order and Empire in their entirety, he returned in 2023 with a great set of Queensryche material spanning his entire time with that legendary band, and now he’s back with a complete playing of one of rocks all-time great records, Operation: Mindcrime.
Please scroll down for MisplacedStraws’ Geoff Tate live photos and review.
Originally released in 1988, Operation: Mindcrime was groundbreaking. Queensryche style of modern, progressive metal combined with an incredible story produced a record that, for me and many others, was life changing. My friends and I spent countless hours analyzing every note and every lyric. While at 16 we may not have totally understood the socio-political and religious messages, it challenged us to explore and dig deeper into the world around us. For a group of Connecticut kids, it influenced how we viewed the world more than anything else in our lives. I was lucky enough to have seen the original band play the record live in 1990 and 2006 and have seen both Tate and the current version of Queensryche play selections from it many times over the years, so the opportunity to see Geoff Tate play it live, for the final time, was something I couldn’t pass up.
Geoff Tate has approached the musicians he’s worked with in his solo career as more of a collective than a traditional band. He has assembled a cast of tremendous musicians from around the world, and they tend to drift in and out of his band for each tour. For this run, he has long time members Kieran Robertson on guitar and Jack Ross on bass, joined by the incredible Dario Parente on guitar, James Brown on guitar and vocals, Baker on drums, and Clodagh McCarthy on keys and vocals. With the exception of Baker and McCarthy, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing the other musicians in various lineups of Tate’s band over the years. They are all top musicians who breathe energy and life into the material. Interestingly, Parente may be best known for his time with European metal band Headless, which, at one time, also featured former Queensryche drummer Scott Rockenfield.
Geoff Tate was in great voice and spirits throughout the night. He and the band, particularly in the duets with McCarthy and Brown, brought a great sense of theatricality and storytelling to the stage that the material demands. McCarthy left her post behind the keys to take center stage as Sister Mary for the record’s centerpiece “Suite Sister Mary”, while Brown became Dr. X in “The Chase”, a track from Operation: Mindcrime II that was originally a duet between Tate and the late Ronnie James Dio. While there was absolutely nothing wrong with McCarthy’s performance, she is a wonderful singer with a strong stage presence, for those of us who have obsessed over this record for 37 years, she wasn’t Pamela Moore, the original voice of Sister Mary. That obsession may have cast a shadow over a great night.
As I mentioned, the band played the hell out of these songs, but having spent nearly four decades fixating on every nuance can be a drawback when it’s not the same. Each of the three guitarists was great in their own right, but they didn’t have the tone of Chris DeGarmo and Michael Wilton. The background vocals, so important to this record, were flawless, but they weren’t the same timbre as the original band. I will freely admit this issue is mine, not Geoff Tate’s or his band, but that is the risk you take when you recreate something so iconic.
As “Eyes of a Stranger” faded into the air, the second part of the night began. The “second set” featured five tracks from Operation: Mindcrime II interspersed with three classics from Empire. Much like in the movies, the sequel wasn’t as strong as the original. The band was going through a rough time, and outside of Tate, the members of Queensryche were not very involved in the writing or recording of Mindcrime II. The sold-out theater seemed to lose a little steam in the second half. Brown ditched his guitar and had the unenviable task of singing Dio’s part in “The Chase”. While he is a great singer, he isn’t Ronnie James Dio. “Jet City Woman”, “Empire”, and “Silent Lucidity” each pumped the energy back into the crowd. I understand adding the Mindcrime II songs in to continue the story, but after such an emotional high it may have been a better bet to add in more classic Queensryche material. The night ended, as tradition, with the song that started it all, “Queen of the Reich”.
Operation: Mindcrime is arguably a top 5 record in the history of hard rock, it is also one whose music and message have aged very well. A story about a ruthless leader brainwashing his cult into carrying out his wishes rings very true today. Tate said this tour will hit 60 countries over the next 2 1/2 years, this is the perfect time in history for this story to be told to a new audience. “Eradicate the fascists, revolution will grow”.
