In a new interview with Tom Leu of the “Sound Matters” show, former QUEENSRŸCHE frontman Geoff Tate was asked which album from his career he thinks is the best representation of who he is as a singer, songwriter and an overall artist. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Wow, that’s a tough one. I’m really, really partial to the last album that QUEENSRŸCHE did together with me [2011’s ‘Dedicated To Chaos’]. That album had something incredibly special about it. It was an album that everybody in the band contributed so much to, and we were really in a high-level writing mode at the time. And I love the way the album sounds. I think Kelly Gray did an amazing job on the production on that record. And I think it’s a well-rounded record; it has a lot of different kinds of songs on it. It shows the depth of the writing of the band, and really where we were at that point.”
Other members of QUEENSRŸCHE have disputed Tate‘s claim that “Dedicated To Chaos” was a collaborative effort, with guitarist Michael Wilton telling Guitar World magazine in 2011 that he and his bandmates ” had a couple of different ideas” for the direction of the album, “and then the lead singer kind of changed the direction” of the sessions. Wilton added that his contributions to the LP were done “kind of through the mail.”
Guitarist Parker Lundgren has also been critical of “Dedicated To Chaos”, saying that “it almost felt like there was a battle between what songs to use, mainly the producers. It was almost like they wanted to cut the band out of it, even being a part of the process. That’s how I felt. There were songs that ended up on the record that I never even heard. The record comes out and I’m, like, ‘I never heard that song when we were in the studio.’ It was just bizarre.”
Bassist Eddie Jackson has previously said that “Dedicated To Chaos” was QUEENSRŸCHE‘s “most criticized effort to date. It was not well received,” he said. “This was a band direction Geoff Tate insisted on taking even though the rest of us had disagreed.”
In April 2014, Tate and QUEENSRŸCHE announced that a settlement had been reached after a nearly two-year legal battle where the singer sued over the rights to the QUEENSRŸCHE name after being fired in 2012. Original QUEENSRŸCHE members Wilton (guitar), Scott Rockenfield (drums) and Jackson responded with a countersuit. The settlement included an agreement that Wilton, Rockenfield and Jackson would continue as QUEENSRŸCHE, while Tate would have the sole right to perform the albums “Operation: Mindcrime” and “Operation: Mindcrime II” in their entirety live.
QUEENSRŸCHE has released three albums thus far with Tate‘s replacement, ex-CRIMSON GLORY frontman Todd La Torre — 2013’s “Queensrÿche”, 2015’s “Condition Hüman” and 2019’s “The Verdict”.
