As the memories fade of Queensrÿche’s catastrophic ‘final’ album with former vocalist Geoff Tate at the helm, 2011’s Dedicated to Chaos, we slip into the third album that this version of the band has recorded with a comfortable resignation to the fact that this is a band that are never going to recapture their glory days – so why not just enjoy them in the moment?

The Todd La Torre-fronted Queensrÿche (the fronted-and-backed, actually, as the vocalist also plays all the drums on The Verdict in place of percussive stalwart Scott Rockenfield) provide a sort of trad-metal comfort food on this album. They’ve decided – probably quite rightly – that what their fans want is a warm and fuzzy amalgam of their first four albums from the eighties and early nineties, and so that’s what we receive. La Torre, of course, is more Tate than Tate – certainly more Tate than Tate actually wants to be in 2019, anyway – and he handles all the material here with a sort of understated aplomb that tells the listener that he knows his place within the QR universe and isn’t about to rock any boats just yet. Propaganda Fashion treads a nice line between Rage For Order and Operation: Mindcrime, whilst the superb Man the Machine is a headbanging belter right out of the band’s early days. Long term fans will of course welcome this news.

Dark Reverie sees the vocalist inject a little more of his own personality into proceedings, and it opens the second half of the album in epic fashion. Queensrÿche have long been masters of the dark, brooding, semi-power ballad and this is right up there with their best. A dramatic chorus underpinned with strident power chords and superbly layered vocals really does start you thinking that maybe, despite my opening paragraph musings, a new golden age may well await the band…

…For a little while anyway. The final four tracks, strong though they are in their own way, return to more conservative mindsets, content again to reprise those halcyon days of yore. And why not? Each of the ‘new’ Queensrÿche releases have surpassed easily the ‘quirky’ output of their estranged former throatsmith in terms of entertainment value and commitment to metal, and the band are clearly content with their lot as things stand.

This is solid, enjoyable metal from a band that owes nothing to any of us, and long may they prosper – but oh! How Dark Reverie has set me to thinking what an exciting future this band can have again if they possess the bravery to spread their wings just a little next time around…

Century Media will release The Verdict on March 1st…