Queensryche
Once again, METAL SHOP Rocks was invited to be part of a taping of ‘That Metal Show’ season 12. Guests for the taping included Dave Mustaine from Megadeth, Carmine Appice from King Kobra, Todd La Torre and Scott Rockenfield from Queensrÿche and a one hour session with former Metallica bassist, Jason Newsted.

The cast and crew as always were very cool and allowed us to get some cool photos of the event. The new season of ‘That Metal Show’ begins June 1st on VH1 Classic.


Who Are The Top 20 Metal Bands Of All Time?
Depends who you ask and how they define who is metal or just hard rock. For example, many agree that Metalica, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest are metal, but KISS, AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses are not metal.
That is how the authors of the new book ‘The Merciless Book of Metal Lists‘ see it in one of several indexes they compiled for this release set for April 9, 2013 by Abrams Image.
Howie Abrams and Sacha Jenkins’ book features numerous compilations of bests (songs, guitarists, album covers featuring goats) and worsts (embarrassing metal videos, metal fashion faux pas’).
80′s metal fans will also surely appreciate unconventional lists such as: ’10 Reasons Why EVERYONE Loves Slayer’s ‘Reign In Blood” and ’10 Accomplishments Iron Maiden Would Never Have Achieved had Paul Di’Anno Remained Their Singer’.
One of the lists sure to spark some debate is ’20 of the Greatest Metal Voices.’ They nailed the top three (my opinion) and Queensryche’s Geoff Tate certainly deserves a top five appearance:
1. Ronnie James Dio (Black Sabbath, Dio)
2. Rob Halford (Judas Priest)
3. Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden)
4. Eric Adams (Manowar)
5. Geoff Tate (Queensrÿche)
6. King Diamond (Mercyful Fate, King Diamond)
7. Tom Araya (Slayer)
8. John Bush (Armored Saint/Anthrax)
9. James Hetfield (Metallica)
10. Max Cavalera (Sepultura, Soulfly)
In an interview with the New York Times, Abrams said Dio was the unanimous choice for the top spot because he had a virtuosity that set him far apart from other top metal vocalists.
“If he needed to apply darkness, he could do it,” said Abrams. “If he needed to belt and go to a higher range, he could. He replaced Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath, and I’m not sure there was a taller task for a vocalist. He did it with ease and grace, and he may have improved on what Oz did in the first place.”
‘The Merciless Book of Metal Lists’ is a fun read. I especially enjoyed viewing the artwork from ’200 Embarrassingly Bad Album Covers’… Anthrax took the top two spots with ‘State of Euphoria’ and number one ‘Fistful of Metal.’

BigMusicGeek.com: Despite him being rather far removed from the group, do you still have a functional relationship with Chris DeGarmo? What were the main motivating factors behind him leaving the group amid their main commercial peak?
Geoff Tate: “Yes. I’ve always had a relationship with Chris. I just spoke to him last week. …I can’t really answer for him, but from my perspective, he just got sick of it all, ya know? It’s really difficult to keep a band together when they hate you, are resentful of you and are jealous of you. There’s only so many days that you can walk in there with a happy face and say ‘Okay, guys’ (laughs), ya know? He just got worn down by it all and wanted to do something different with his life. He was in an economic position to do something different with his life and he just did it. Speaking to me, he said ‘Look, I’ve really enjoyed this and what we’ve created together and I cherish our partnership, but I really need to do something different with my life. We’ve had a really good run, but it’s time for me to move on and do something different’. You can’t argue with someone for wanting to live their life. Life is short. The road that you get on when you’re twenty years old and think you’re going to travel for the rest of your life…there’s always that crossroads where if all the stars align, maybe you’ll take that left turn instead of a right. He just got off the road. …He wanted to do something different and he went and did it.”
Queensrÿche with new singer Todd LaTorre performed New Year’s Eve (Dec. 31, 2012) at Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas, Nevada. Check out video below.

Setlist:
01. Queen Of The Reich
02. Speak
03. Walk In The Shadows
04. The Whisper
05. En Force
06. Child Of Fire
07. Warning
08. The Needle Lies
09. Prophecy
10. Road To Madness
11. I Don’t Believe In Love
12. My Empty Room
13. Eyes Of A Stranger
Encore:
14. Take Hold Of The Flame
15. Jet City Woman
16. Silent Lucidity
17. Empire
Click Here to view more videos.
Screamer Magazine: (New Queensrÿche vocalist Todd LaTorre) “This is a rebirth of a legendary band that deserves this chance again and that’s how I feel as a fan! I think I can speak from a different perspective than anybody here because this has been my favorite band since I was 14 years old. And I met them 20 years ago, when I was 18 years old. I drove to a record store and they signed my ‘Warning’ cover album–I still have it. So I’m able to look at things from both sides, which I feel gives an objective point of view.”
(Drummer Scott Rockenfield) “Most of it was geared around wanting to do better business and watching what our business has been doing, as well as trying to address some issues that began early in 2012. I mean, things had been building for a while, but in a nutshell, we wanted to address those things and it wasn’t accepted very well, and that started a sort of chaotic steam roll of a lot of negative stuff going on, which cultivated in the very end and escalated to what happened in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It had been building for a while, to be honest, and one of those things where we just finally decided to sit down and really address some of these issues and talk about ways we could do better business together, and that required us to have to make some decisions. We wanted to move on with some employees that were working with us and to just address a lot of issues that were on the table for us. And, like I said, once we opened up those conversations, it didn’t go very well, and so we had to make some decisions based around that and so that’s what we did. We just decided that it was best for us to move on; we didn’t see eye to eye anymore on those business decisions, so we wanted to keep doing what Queensrÿche is good at, which is making music and playing shows for the fans that want to hear what we do. So that’s what we did. The timing was good, we moved on, we found Todd, he fit the role. He’s got a great personality and all our chemistry together is really great and here we are.”
(Guitarist Michael Wilton) “The ultimate decision, though, is going to be how the fans feel and how the fans react and how this is played out in the marketplace. We’re doing pretty good numbers right now and we are the majority of the band, and to be honest, I think the fans are going to be psyched.”












