Review: Queensryche: Empire: The One CD That I Can't Live Without

Queensryche's Empire is my favorite cd/album/cassette/record/whatever you call them today, of all-time.  There is not one single flaw on this record.  Every song is as good as and better than every other song.  It offers a variety of sounds from melodic (Jet City Woman) to anthem (Best I Can) to power ballad (Silent Lucidity) to harsh realism (Della Brown) to anger (Empire).  The album sucks you in and doesn't let you go.  

That is all right though, because you will not want to let go.  This is a record for fans of Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd.  It has the driving animalistic pulse (on drums) reminiscent of John Bonham.  It has a trippy, conceptual sound heard best on Dark Side of the Moon.  Geoff Tate's vocal range would make Mariah Carey envious.  Chris DeGarmo's guitar work is so excellently crafted that you'd swear that he is the reincarnation of Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn, with some Jimmy Page thrown in for good measure.  

This record is so well produced, so well written, so well performed that you wonder how something this great could ever be created.  You'd think that this level of achievement was as unattainable as a perfect season in baseball or running a 2 minute mile.  Once you hear it though, you will understand that once in a while, once in a lifetime perhaps, like true love, you can be astonished on the grandest of levels.  I know I am.

The record kicks off with the power rock song Best I Can.  This song is 10 helpings of straightforward rock.  When Spinal Tap said "Ours go to 11", they were talking about this song.  It tells the beginning of the story of a man who is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.  He will not let this handicap slow him down or debilitate him.  He will strive "to be the best man, the best man that I (he) can".