I told myself I would write this up within a day after the concert, so here it is nearly three weeks later.

Within the past year and a half or so, I’ve seen Queensryche three times now.  In early 2008 they played the Voodoo Lounge in Kansas City with Don Dokken opening with an acoustic set.  Queensrcyhe played a great set, playing songs from all their albums with a lot of lesser-known tracks thrown in.  Everything clicked for them that night and the crowd was really into it.

Back in the fall they played a radio station’s Halloween concern with Tesla.  The crowd was absolutely insane and their set focused mainly on their hits.  A good show, but not as good as the one before.

When I heard they were coming again in April I wasn’t sure if I was going to go.  For some reason a lot of shows had been booked on the same night - Lamb of God/Children of Bodom/God Forbid which would have been nice to see, and also Reverend Horton Heat in Lawrence which would just be down the street for me.  I decided on Queensryche mainly because some friends were going and also due to the set that was planned.  Queensryche had posted on their website that the tour would consist of songs from three of their albums:  Rage for Order, Empire, and their new one, American Soldier.  Rage for Order has always been my favorite Queensryche album and has always been woefully under-represented in concert, so that clinched it for me.

The order of the three albums wasn’t hard to guess - they started off with Rage for Order.  The first thing I noticed is that Queensryche has now become one of those bands that adds extra people on stage - since the departure of their latest guitarist they’ve replaced him with a non-member guitarist and a guy playing keyboards and guitars.  In almost every case where this happens it bugs me.  They didn’t need anyone previously, and the addition of the extra people makes it feel like I’m seeing Queensryche featuring Geoff Tate instead of Queensryche the band.

Despite my gripe, everything sounded good.  They played six songs from Rage then started with the songs from American Soldier.  I only had the album for a week or so before the show so the songs hadn’t grown on me, but the songs from it sounded much better live than the studio versions.  Unlike a lot of older bands, the crowd seemed to be into the new material which is cool.  Geoff Tate even made a comment about it and you could see that he appreciated it.

Finally they wrapped up the show with songs from Empire.  Even though there are certain songs that you know they’re going to have to play (”Silent Lucidity”, “Jet City Woman”, and “Empire”) they still pulled out some songs that I hadn’t heard them play in a while.  For the encore they played “Take Hold of the Flame” and “Empire”, wrapping up a great show.

Here’s the complete set list:

Neue Regel
The Whisper
I Dream In Infrared
Screaming In Digital
Walk In The Shadows
I Will Remember
Surgical Strike
Sliver
The Killer
If I Were King
Man Down
Dead Man’s Words
Home Again
The Voice
Best I Can
The Thin Line
One And Only
Hand On Heart
Silent Lucidity
Jet City Woman
Anybody Listening?
————-
Empire
Take Hold Of The Flame

Out of all the hard rock bands that were big in the 80s, Queensryche is one of the few that can still pull it off and don’t feel like a nostalgia show.  They’re still putting out new material and the shows don’t feel like they’re just going through the motions.  They played for over two hours, which is nice considering a lot of bands like to pack it in after just an hour and a half.  Three times in a year and a half may be too much in too short a time, but I’ll definately check them out in the future.

So October 19th was the annual Freaker’s Ball, this year with Queensryche and Tesla.  I’ve lived in Kansas City for over ten years and have never been to one.  Every year they have a pretty good lineup but they’re usually outdoors which doesn’t sound so great in October.  This year’s event was at the newly remodeled Midland Theater in downtown KC so I figured I would go.

The show started at 6:00 on a Sunday which pretty much guaranteed I would be late.  I missed about fifteen minutes of local band The Leo Project.  They reminded me a little of Staind, in a good way.  They put on a solid set - nothing bad about it but just not my thing.

Next up was Mini-Kiss.  A couple of the guys I met up with had gone to a meet-and-greet earlier with Tesla and they had heard Mini-Kiss do a sound check which surprised me because they came out and played to recorded music.   The vocals were live but you could even see that their instruments weren’t plugged in.  You know, I hate hate hate pre-recorded music like this.  Even stranger, they plugged in their instruments to do some non-Kiss songs and sounded pretty good, but they eventually went back to the recorded music.  The whole thing was odd and the novelty wore off about ten minutes into it.

When Tesla’s set started things began to get ugly.  We were on the floor near the front and the crowd started getting thicker which really wasn’t a surprise.  What was interesting was how much drama was going on during Tesla’s and Queensryche’s set.  A lot of near fights but some non-typical stuff started happening.  One woman, wearing a fishnet body suit and denim shorts, was being chased around by her husband who wanted to go home.  Every time he got near her she would duck down and crawl across the beer-soaked floor to get away from him.  He was so intent on catching up to her that he nearly got into several fights in the meantime.

Another entitlement-minded mother decided that her eight year old son needed to be at the front so she pushed her way up so he could be pressed up against the barrier.  Oh yeah, and mom’s t-shirt said “Slut” on it.  Nice.

There were another half dozen strange situations going on that I couldn’t turn away from so I admit I wasn’t paying complete attention to the concert.  The vocal mix on Tesla was low and didn’t sound that good.  Tesla’s a band where I like a lot of their songs but others I’m just lukewarm about, and they played a lot of those songs I’m not crazy about like “Hang Tough”.  I can’t stand that one.  They played a lot of songs off their new album which are pretty strong, especially “So What”.  I like it when these bands resist the urge to become an oldies act.

Queensryche sounded a lot better.  They had a stripped down stage set up that was pretty striking.  Their set was good but they were a lot better when I saw them headline another show earlier this year.  A lot of the same songs were played as the last time I saw them, including two off of Rage for Order which is always a good thing.  I haven’t seen a setlist posted anywhere but I don’t believe they played any songs off their first two albums which is surprising.

Overall a good time.  As a side note, the remodeled Midland Theater looks good, but I would still be wary of going there in the summer.  I’d like to think they would improve the air conditioning situation there but it wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t.

98.9’s website has some nice pictures from the show.