Former Queensrÿche frontman Geoff Tate has officially unveiled “Power“, the explosive lead single from his forthcoming solo studio album, Operation: Mindcrime III. The highly anticipated third chapter in the iconic concept series is slated for a worldwide release on May 3, and the new track is currently available for streaming.
Co-written by Geoff Tate and his guitarist and producer Kieran Robertson, new single features a formidable lineup of rock and metal talent. The track highlights drum work by Rich Baur, bass lines courtesy of Disturbed bassist and album co-producer John Moyer, and intricate guitar contributions from both Dario Parente and Amaury Altmayer. Furthermore, Geoff and Kieran Robertson handled all synth and string arrangements, while the final mix and mastering were executed by Juan Urteaga at Trident Studios in Pacheco, California.
During a recent appearance on the “Let There Be Talk” podcast hosted by comedian Dean Delray, Tate said:
“It’s a cool track. ‘Power‘ is the first — I don’t know — we call ’em singles nowadays. It’s the first release on the album. And, yeah, it’s a really cool song — very, very energetic, very up, and kind of says a lot in a very short time, which I like.”
Addressing Dean Delray‘s observation that the new single heavily echoes the classic Queensrÿche sound, the singer confirmed it was entirely intentional:
“Yeah. Well, part of the whole writing process was keeping the music in the universe of Mindcrime, writing within that style, I guess you’d say.”
When discussing the complex creative process behind concluding a trilogy that began with 1988’s Operation: Mindcrime and continued with 2006’s Operation: Mindcrime II, the vocalist explained the meticulous narrative planning involved:
“I think you use whatever sort of way you can in order to get what you want. And, for me, I sort of look at it as a story, and I write the story out first of what is happening, and then I kind of dissect it and create chapters, and those chapters turn into songs. And then I kind of work to link them all together and follow a storyline that makes sense. And then you gotta kind of factor in musically how you’re gonna tie it together. Does it make sense musically and melodically to put this song before this song, before this song, before this song? ‘Cause that’s a big thing too, is making it flow, so it doesn’t seem obtrusive and people don’t have to turn the page back to find out what happened, and they’re kind of following along in a chronological order.”
Geoff noted that the 13-track record was assembled unconventionally while the band relentlessly toured the globe, utilizing unique architectural spaces to capture the album’s sound.
“There’s 13 songs on the record, and it was recorded all over the world. And the beauty of modern recording is that if you have the right equipment, the quality gear, we just take it with us wherever we go. And we set up in hotel rooms backstage at shows, venues. I think one track was recorded in a church. Just wherever we have the right kind of room for the sound, we can record there,” he revealed.
Geoff continued: “We recorded one of the songs, parts of it, in this castle in Italy. Do you remember that character Casanova? Well, he was imprisoned in this castle way back when. And the place is just an amazing ruin, of course, but it had this one room that was just incredible. It [had] big, high ceilings, open environment, big stone walls and that kind of thing. But it added a really unique sound to the song. So anyway, we just kind of took advantage of that wherever we could and wrote the album as we were touring around the world, really. And I wrote music for the album and lyrics for the album. And Kieran Robertson, my writing partner for this project, contributed so much to this record, playing guitar and also writing music and lyrics too.”
