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By Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal, October 1st 2011, House Of Blues, Hollywood CA: The year of 2011 marks the 30th year in Queensryche's career, and they are doing a North American run of dates to celebrate this milestone. Tonight they visited a packed Sunset Strip House Of Blues to treat the audience with a full set of old and new tunes. The band's "cabaret" show last year left me highly confused and unsatisfied, so I was waiting for this show in the hope of a better Queensryche experience, and it sure turned out to be that way in the end.

The house music was stopped and the lights went out exactly at 10 PM, and the intro rang loud on the PA, accompanied by visuals on two screens either side of the drum kit. I felt the intro dragged on for way too long, and the wait for the band members to appear on stage seemed endless. After more than 5 minutes of this intro, they finally took the stage one by one, among loud cheers from the highly anticipative crowd. They made a very mid-tempo start to the set, with "Get Started" from the new album "Dedicated To Chaos". Geoff Tate was sounding amazing on the vocals right from the get go, hitting and holding all the high notes brilliantly. This was followed by "Damaged", after which Geoff addressed the crowd for the first time and announced the band's 30th anniversary, and as expected, drew a huge roar from the crowd.

Even though the crowd was giving the band an excellent response from the first song itself, it was during the 3rd song "I Don't Believe In Love" that they really began to sing along to the lyrics. Guitarists Michael Wilton and Parker Lundgren took center stage for the delightful guitar harmony in this song, and judging from the crowd's reaction I could almost feel them collectively saying, "Yeah, that's more like it!" Geoff addressed the crowd once again and urged everyone to get even more involved in the show, and emptied a whole water bottle on them as if to wake them up. Normally, I'm not a fan of singers talking to the crowd after every song and prefer them to just play music for the most part. But I've got to say, I didn't mind Geoff Tate's monologues even one bit. He had a certain personality and presence about him that perhaps most other talkative frontmen lack, and chose his words wisely. While he kept his talk upbeat and light-hearted, he didn't indulge in mindless stand-up comedy as many others do, and talked largely about the music, which I really appreciated.

The band played two songs from the American Soldier album, but before they did so, Geoff gave us a very nice build-up with the background story upon which the album is based. Besides 2 songs each from American Soldier and Dedicated To Chaos, it was "back to your regularly scheduled programming", in the words of Geoff Tate. They played three songs each from the Empire and Operation: Mindcrime albums, much to the delight of everyone present here tonight, and at least one song each from every other album, with the exception of the 2007 all-covers album Take Cover. I would have liked to see them play something from this album as well, just to see how they present a song by one of the bands that has influenced and/or inspired them. But oh well, may be next time. I was also more than a little miffed that "Queen Of The Reich" was again missing from the set for the second tour in a row. It's like Motorhead not playing Ace Of Spades or Alice Cooper not playing School's Out. But, the number of positives in Queensryche's song selection far outweighed the number of negatives in my opinion, and as long as that's the case, it's all good.

During one of his monologues, Geoff introduced Jason Ames as the guest musician who is doing backing vocals, keyboards and additional guitars for the band on this tour. I thought his contribution was quite prominent, and he added a lot of impetus to the band's overall sound. The band ended the main set with "Take Hold Of The Flame", which garnered a loud chorus sing-along from this audience. They came back out for a 3-song encore, finishing the show with the amazing "Eyes Of A Stranger". The five members plus Jason Ames took a collective bow and thanked the crowd for their support. I thought Geoff summed it up perfectly when he said, "The media says our music is dead, but we are not dead here tonight. Thank you!" I agree with him, and sometimes the media write them off without even giving them a chance. I'm certainly glad I went to the show, and honestly, it exceeded my expectations.

Whenever I compare Queensryche to other bands that play progressive metal, to me they have always been more artsy and exotic in their style, and tonight was solid proof of that. The songs about war, deserts, soldiers and many other such themes were delivered with great aplomb by the band, led by Tate's pristine vocals. They presented material from their whole catalog, and barring the absence of Queen Of The Reich, they put on a show that turned out to be an excellent representation of their entire career.

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