Just a few months after witnessing Queensryche play an amazing show, I decided to see them again at the Warfield in San Francisco. The band was not only supporting their latest Q2K release, but also their upcoming greatest hits album.
Once again, the show was spectacular and the descriptions and adjectives I'd use would be similar to the ones I used when I saw them before: thrilling, powerful, and simply a class act. Again, a lot of the set was from Operation: Mindcrime, starting off with Revolution Calling, and following it up Speak, Spreading the Disease, The Needle Lies, I Don't Believe in Love and Eyes of a Stranger. Other tunes included Walk in the Shadows, Empire, Silent Lucidity, and Jet City Woman. As usual, I didn't recognise the new tunes. One of the surprises was an excellent performance of NM 156, a tune that could've easily fit on Operation: Mindcrime, and The Lady Wore Black.
After the show, I met the band who were quite cool and expressed my admiration for the sheer brilliance of what I (to reiterate for the nth time) consider to be one of the greatest albums ever made.
Project 86 opened and they played some good hard rock music and were a decent warm-up act for Queensryche. This show was the first one in the latest leg of their tour and I highly recommend checking them out in concert.
Uniform printout reads end of line.
Protect code intact leaves little time.
Erratic surveys, free thinking not allowed.
My hands shake, my push buttons silence the outside crowd.
One world government has outlawed war among nations.
Now social control requires population termination.
Have we come too far to turn around?
Does emotion hold the key?
Is logic just a synonym for this savagery,
disguised in forgotten lost memory.
Microchip logic, have we no more thought?
"Is this wrong?" I enter, answers sought.
Punch, punch, punch, transfer this data into code.
Wide eyes watch my Number 156 is shown.
Created from past life to perform Illicit function.
I fail this conscious Madness I man/machine imperfection.
Have we come too far to turn around?
Does emotion hold the key?
Is logic just a synonym for this savagery,
disguised in forgotten lost memory.
End of line.
--Queensryche, NM 156