Queensrÿche are digging back into their own origins for their next record. In a new interview with Marko Syrjala and Arto Lehtinen of Metal-Rules.com, singer Todd La Torre offered fresh detail on the follow-up to 2022’s Digital Noise Alliance, revealing that the album will be a concept piece rooted in a subject the band hasn’t revisited since its very first release.
Regarding the songwriting, La Torre made clear there’s plenty in the pipeline — the holdup is mostly time, given how relentlessly the band tours:
“I have a ton of songs at home that the guys have worked on and written — a lot of really good demo stuff. I’ve already put vocals down on a couple of songs, but I have a lot of material staring me in the face, waiting for me to write lyrics and melodies. The problem is that we play so much. Even when we leave Europe, I go home for two days, then I’m out for four days in the States. Then I’m home for another two days, and after that I’m gone all through July. So I only get a little break in August when I can really try to work on stuff, because you need your ears to decompress. You also have things at home to take care of. But yeah, we’re writing a new record.”
When the interviewers asked whether the album would pick up where Digital Noise Alliance left off, musically or lyrically, La Torre shut that idea down and hinted at something bigger. “No. I’m not going to say what it is, but… I don’t know if you’d call it a concept album. That’s kind of the idea,” he said.
He also headed off the obvious assumption — that this could be another installment in the band’s storied Operation: Mindcrime saga — and instead pointed straight back to the beginning of Queensrÿche‘s catalog:
“This is going to touch on a subject that Queensrÿche hasn’t talked about since the very first record… There is, 100 percent, a connection [to the first Queensrÿche LP]. This album is going to be based around a concept that happens on the first album but is never talked about again in Queensrÿche‘s history. So, it has nothing to do with Operation: Mindcrime. We don’t have any interest in that. This is a whole different thing. Musically, I’d say everything I’m hearing sounds much more old school — more like the EP, Warning and Rage For Order, maybe with a little newer flavor — but it definitely sounds like classic Queensrÿche.”
As for how the story will be told, La Torre said he’s steering away from a rigid, track-by-track narrative in favor of something more cinematic and flexible:
“Writing a concept album where every song leads directly into the next one isn’t really what I’m interested in. It’s more like when you watch a movie. Sometimes the beginning starts where the ending is, and then they add pieces throughout the story in different parts of the movie until it all comes together. You could literally move one song over here, and another song over there, and it still works.”
He went a step further, suggesting the concept may be too big to contain on a single album, leaving the door open for the story to stretch across more than one release:
“The way I’m thinking about it, there’s no way you can tell everything in one album. So, it could be. I think if this were the last record the band ever wrote, there would still be storytelling there, and maybe that could be enough. But it would always be open to evolving further. It won’t be just a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s a story that can go on and on.”
During the same conversation, La Torre also noted a milestone of a different kind: the record will mark the end of the band’s current record deal, confirming it will be Queensrÿche‘s last album released through Century Media.
Queensrÿche launched a European tour on June 6 in Köln, Germany, with the run continuing through July 5 in Cartagena, Spain. The dates mix headlining shows, with Rivers Of Nihil opening, and festival appearances.
