G and I rocked this album for "date night" on Saturday. Fuck man, what an album! SO many good songs, from the start all the way to the last song “eyes of a stranger”.  

I’m generally not a big fan of concept albums as I often find that it doesn’t translate lyrically, but everything fell into place with this album.

I remember getting turned onto Queensryche from Ron Quintana’s rampage radio KUSF in San Francisco. He was playing the track “Queen of the Reich ” pretty heavily, and it was some good shit. I continue to follow them through the next few albums, but this album really hit home.

I vividly recall being on tour for the first vio-lence record eternal nightmare, and listening to this on endless repeat on my cassette Walkman. It got played a lot in the van deck as well.  The lyrics are quite gritty, dealing with heroin abuse, prostitution, and assassinations. As I was essentially a fully functioning drug addict at the time, it definitely connected with me.

I got to see them supporting Metallica a couple years after this release, but it was just the hits. Caught them about 10 years ago playing this album in it’s entirety at the Warfield, and it was fucking awesome!

The Operation Mindcrime wikipedia has a great breakdown of the concept/story, was very cool to read up on some of the background details that I didn’t catch while just listening to the record.

Well done Queensryche, these songs are timeless. 🤘🏻

Anyone digging this album currently or back in the day?