Queensryche Bombed In Iraq

Queensryche were injured whilst visiting troops in Iraq, frontman Geoff Tate has revealed.

Tate tells Bravewords & Bloody Knuckles:

"The Iraq trip was really pretty darn intense. We were there for two weeks in Kuwait and Iraq, kind of flying around with the military to all these different bases and playing shows to the troops over there, which is really a wonderful experience. Hanging out with everybody there. They treat you really well. They show you everything they do and you get to do things like blow stuff up with C4 explosives and shoot down flying helicopters, that kind of thing, which is all pretty macho stuff, you know.

"But we were up in Northern Iraq and actually got bombed while we were up there. Had to spend a lot of hours in bunkers there, waiting for the insurgents to get under control, so that was kind of a bit of a scary situation, but we all lived through it though we got injured. And just a lot of sunburn and a little bit of issues with all the dust in the air. A very dusty place. I had to kind of walk around with a bandana soaked in water around my face to keep my voice from going. Really an adventure. Quite a different place to be. It was the first time we’d ever been to the Middle East and it was really interesting seeing how people live and their philosophy on things, and just what was going on over there, too, in a war-zone. You can’t really imagine. You just see pictures on the news. That’s one thing, but it’s a whole different thing to be there.”

In other Queensryche news, the band have mostly completed their brand new studio album, the follow up to last year’s American Soldier.

"We are planning on a spring release," Tate revealed. "It will be a very strong collection of songs. The topic of the album is all over the place. There's a lot of different subjects we tackle. The sound and the writing direction is probably more focused on rhythm than any of our records have been. Scott (Rockenfield; drums) and Eddie (Jackson; bass) are contributing a lot to the composition of this record, so there's a lot of focus on rhythm structure and keeping things very rhythmatic and moving. It's got a lot of very intricate bass/drum work on it that perhaps hasn't been featured on earlier albums. Therefore it's going to have a very modern sound to it. Music these days, outside of hard rock and metal, is really rhythm-oriented. There's a lot of movement to it. So we're kind of going with that as a feature on this record. Still, there's a lot of interesting guitar work as we try to push the guitar into different areas as well, while trying to stay away from the bone-head stuff like the chunk-chunk-chunk kind of thing. We're using the guitars in a more melodic sense. The band is producing it with Kelly Gray, our longtime friend and engineer (and former guitarist). We've got about three-quarters written and recorded."

The band have also just released a 20th Anniversary Edition of their classic Empire album which has been expanded to two CDs containing not just the original album but also a couple of bonus studio tracks and a live show recorded at Hammersmith Odeon in 1990.

(Bravewords)