When I was a dental student, a band called Queensrÿche (umlaut over the y, not something you see every day) released an album Operation:Mindcrime. It was a heavy metal concept album, a series of songs that told the story of a man caught up in a bizarre mixture of government corruption, crooked evangelists, mysterious assassins and mind altering pharmacology. Unlike a lot of metal at the time, it was pretty listenable stuff - very much what I imagine Thin Lizzy and Meat Loaf would come up with if Ridley Scott and Michael Crichton said they needed a soundtrack for a movie.
A concept album should really be listened to in its entirety, in a single sitting in the same way that you would watch a movie or TV show, but to be fair, Mindcrime’s songs are strong enough to stand on their own – they just make more sense when arranged in a particular order beside each other. Probably closest to a musical. The songs in the movie Grease were hits but they fit a narrative structure that makes its own sense.
They came to the Ulster Hall and played it in full on Hallowe’en night 1990. There were other songs, but I don’t remember them. I was there for Mindcrime.
And 25 years passed and I didn’t think of it much again until I saw a BBC article on greatest concept albums that actually make sense and there it was – the only one of their list that I had actually heard. Reading the article sent me back to listen again and it was clear that I’d forgotten how good the music was, and it seemed more in tune with the news then rather than when it was written – 30 years previously at that stage.
As luck would have it, it turned out that Geoff Tate, the singer with Queensrÿche was in Dublin a few days later, performing the album in full for its anniversary with his own band at The Button Factory…I had to go.
I was astonished at how much I enjoyed it. I’ve seen him since and even blogged about that back in 2019, and I was delighted to hear that he’d recorded a sequel album but sadly he’d also announced that he was going to stop performing it in full and was taking the tale on its final tour which would include concerts in Belfast and Dublin. Unfortunately the wrong order for my weekend so I had to go up to Belfast and then get back down to Dublin to do a clinic in Swords Orthodontics the next day. Ideally with a proper night’s sleep in between.
Geoff Tate and his band were outstanding both nights but what I wasn’t expecting was that half his band is Irish, including guitarists DJ O’Sullivan from the exceptional Irish metal band XIII Doors and the spectacularly talented James Brown who were spot on with their tone and tightness. Clodagh McCarthy was on keyboards and performing the female vocals which are vital in the story.
Epilogue:
Finally got home after the second night and got to my bed, switched the alarms off and slept until my body told me to wake up.
And when I looked at social media the next day the first thing that came up was a video tutorial on how to play “I don’t believe in love” on guitar, the closest that Operation:Mindcrime has to a hit single.
Now how did they know?