Originally published by L.S. Media. July 4th 2011.

Dedicated to Chaos is the new album from Queensryche, always touted as one of the finest bands to come out of Seattle, and unfortunately for the best Prog Metal band in existence the album actually describes the album perfectly. Coming on the back of the highly rated, imaginative and committed album American Soldier, Dedicated to Chaos seems a very poor and stunted relation.

Queensryche are no strangers to infuriating their hard core fans, they seem to have a history of producing a quality, statesman like piece of recording history, full of powerful and lyrically intense images only to come crashing down to earth with their next album. The only time they bucked this trend was with the follow up to the incredible 1988 opus Operation Mindcrime with the album that gave them their first top ten hit Empire.

Dedicated to Chaos is no Empire and it’s a real shame, as it comes across that they have taken a step backwards with this album, there is very little warmth to find within the 54 minutes, no Geoff Tate soaring vocals which he built his fine and simply outstanding reputation upon. It also doesn’t have the scathing and brutal honesty that American Soldier, or Empire had in abundance, neither does it have the charm or early grace of the band’s first release The Warning.

It really does come across as the four band members that make up the core of Queensryche have worked together so tightly for so long now that tracks such as Hot Spot Junkie, Drive and Retail Therapy on paper offer so much and yet deliver so badly.

There will be a lot of takers for the worst album of the year and it pains so much to say but Dedicated to Chaos will surely be amongst the runners and riders for the award. No one wants to see the band produce an Operation Mindcrime 3, glorifying past peaks but neither do the fans of this superb group of musicians want to see them languish and fall into a trough that they may never return.

Ian D. Hall