Nobody but an absolute die-hard fan of Queensryche could have dreamed or foreseen how the band from Washington State would come crashing into the rock/metal progressive party in 1988. The group’s first couple of albums, 1984’s debut The Warning and its follow up Rage For Order in 1986 had charted well and the sound that Chris DeGarmo on guitar coupled with the blossoming intensity in which Geoff Tate sang was interesting, erring on the side of a youthful dynamic but didn’t look as though it would ever challenge the accepted order or the new American bands coming through. Then in May 1988 all that changed, the group released perhaps still to this day their single most important work, the dystopian tale of a heroin addict and an attempt at overthrowing the American way of life in a bloody revolution, its policies and its politics that made the times unbearable for many millions. To this day Operation: Mindcrime stands out as a classic, it paved the way for the band to become one of the most highly rated bands of the time with their complexity, incredible guitar playing and unflinching attitude to the social side of American life.

In its own way, the band caused a revolution in music. A couple of weeks earlier Iron Maiden had released the Progressive Metal album Seventh Son of a Seventh Son to great acclaim in the U.K., it was daring and if not for Queensryche would have been thought of as the start of a genre for Metal to go down and explore. The tale of supernatural forces and the fight between God and the Devil over one man’s soul went down well, almost Shakespearian or Marlowe in its outlook and very typically British. What could be better than a tale of good and evil fighting over a man’s soul? Good and evil fighting over a soul when it is tainted, black, full of resentment and struggling with a narcotic habit that is taking away his life bit by bit. The fight between consumerism, political ideology, political and religious corruption, the stirrings of a revolution in a country where the dollar is an export and not just a currency wins hands down in terms of the first true classic of Progressive Metal.

Both albums were chilling, fantastic and brave but Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime went further than Iron Maiden could imagine. The dystopian feel that creeps through the noir-like setting, the anti-religion, anti-politics angle, the allusions of social conscious, the devastating anger and brutality that comes across make the album come to life in a way that was almost unheard of from an American Rock band. It also had the story arc, the great narrative that flows like the Hudson, the Mississippi or the Allegheny Rivers. A story that should be looked at in the same way that some of the great American novels a century and more before made readers look to the great expanse of the continent and see a way of life that appeals. Operation: Mindcrime turns the idea and ideals of Mark Twain, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, The Last of the Mohicans or even Moby Dick and inverts it, playing with the idea of noir fiction in which the hero is the villain, the dark dialogue and troupes of the genre and giving a set of people something other than the money driven period, or holy dollar as the ‘hero’ Nikki sees it, to think about it. Not just a Progressive Metal perception but perhaps the first Noir Progressive concept album. More in keeping with the darkness of Britain’s Graham Greene and his novel Brighton Rock and Gerald Kersh’s Night and the City than Hucklebury Finn. This was not an America of opportunity; this was a country teetering on the edge.

Operation: Mindcrime  takes some of the bitterness and anger felt by many at a system that was top heavy, the corruption that was evident in political and religious circles and feeds it, nurtures it until the anger and displacement overflow and the music gets into the veins and into the heart. The ‘hero’ Nikki wakes up in hospital and under custody, the news and the media, another form that the album sees as being under control from the top, are reporting on the political slayings and executions that have been taken place. The nurse walks in and admonishes Nikki for still being awake past curfew, the first inkling that the listener gets that this is not an America they are used to hearing about. As she turns off the television she is heard to call Nikki a bastard after wishing him sweet dreams. This jolt to the senses starts off an album that in the space of a minute has already gone beyond almost anything the listener had ever heard before. The final piece of dialogue before the music kicks in and the story starts in earnest is Nikki saying to himself, “I remember now, I remember how it started, I can’t remember yesterday, I just remember doing what they told me.” This line frames the whole album, the apparent straight forward testimony of a man admitting to himself that the lines that have been crossed in search of his truth, the need for Heroin and the chaos he has caused has been enough to cripple him as well as take lives.  The line alludes to taking ownership of the crime even if he cannot remember exactly what he has done. He remembers how it all started but the events of the previous 24 hours are a blur, a day that for one reason or another doesn’t exist in his mind. He is unsure of the nature of what he is meant to have done in that time but the situation he finds himself in brings everything flooding back.

It is the use of the word can’t rather than don’t in the third section of that sentence. If Nikki had said don’t the whole album could have been explained away as dream, an amnesiac moment, the real villain of the piece being caught somewhere towards the end and Nicki being set free. By saying can’t it gives the listener the allusion that rather that the fog of drugs of his mind stopping him, he is willing his mind to stop and not question too deeply because he is petrified of what the answer really is. By imploring himself to not remember, to say I cannot, I dare not, his guilt is more than implied. From there the intended revolution becomes apparent.

The themes of the album are in nearly every single blistering song that makes this album an American classic, up there with the likes of Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies, Nirvana’s Nevermind Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, Eagles Hotel California or the Beach Boys Pet Sounds. Albums that define the era they are part of.

In Revolution Calling, the lead song from the album Nikki speaks of a world where the corrupt have become untouchable and that the media is no longer looking after the people’s interests in looking out for bent politicians and people at the top. The lyrics speak the easy but powerful words, “Who do you trust when everyone’s a crook?” the simple play on a word that is echoed on the back of every American Dollar Bill, In God We Trust, is all too evident. This is an album that is unafraid to hit out and take prisoners, no-one is exempt. Further into the album the creeping cynicism is echoed further when the imploring words of ‘Religion and sex are power plays, manipulate the people and the money they pay, selling skin, selling God, the numbers look the same on their credit cards’, damning stuff but intelligently written and observed. Later in the band’s career when they performed the album in its entirety for the first time in years Geoff Tate would take this damning of American politics to a greater height. On the back of his jacket as he talks of the political scandals in Washington D.C. the simple word Liar would be visible for all to see.

Operation: Mindcrime from start to finish is an example of pure genius, an album made at exactly the right time. It’s themes and songs perfectly captured in songs such as Speak, The Needle Lies, I Don’t Believe in Love, the astonishing Suite Sister Mary and Eyes of a Stranger all come together in a way that harks back to Pink Floyd’s The Wall but in a very American way. An album of depth, gravity and outstanding music by Chris DeGarmo, Michael Wilton, Eddie Jackson and Scott Rockenfeld with Geoff Tate providing a defining voice that would match all those in the genre for years to come.

Although there will be those that argue the point in where it sits in the pantheon of the group’s music, with others citing the next release, Empire, as the bands best piece of work, there can be no doubt for those that listen to the album, it gets under the skin in a way that no other recording by the band ever can. A Masterpiece even after 25 years.

Ian D. Hall