Queensryche rolls into City Club in Houma

Through 18 years of touring, 15 albums, 10 compilations and 8 DVD releases, Queensryche continues to deliver their heavy metal/progressive metal sound.

The four-man band rolls into the City Club of Houma Nov. 10 with the Queen of Metal, Lita Ford.

Long considered the “thinking man’s” metal alternative, Queensryche’s concept-driven releases have earned the group a faithful following. And they’ve done it with relatively little change in its core.

Frontman Geoff Tate, drummer Scott Rockenfield, bassist Eddie Jackson and guitarist Michael Wilton continue to bring their music to life. The Houma stop comes near the end of their “American Soldier” tour – Queensryche’s latest studio release.

“I honestly don’t know exactly where Houma is,” Tate admitted. “But we’re looking forward to going down there for the first time. We’ve played mainly in Shreveport and New Orleans when we go down there. I actually have family in Shreveport, so I’m familiar with Louisiana. It should be a great night.”

The night will include three suites of Queensryche music: “Rage for Order,” “American Soldier” and “Empire.”

“So far, we’ve been across the country a couple times and we’ve also been to Europe, Germany and Australia,” Tate said. “We’ll end up in Europe in December. I think we’ve done 30 countries so far this year.”

Released earlier in the year, “American Soldier” is a tribute to the men and women, past and present, who have served their country, the frontman said.

The idea came from conversations with his dad, a Korean veteran, who told his story to his son one day in the living room of his Oklahoma home.

“Through my growing-up years, which was very usual, he didn’t talk about the war,” Tate said. “It wasn’t until recently, I was visiting him, he is living in Oklahoma now, and just kind of out of the blue, he just started talking about it. I told him, ‘Dad, I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear these stories. Let me get my video camera.'”

Tate videotaped all of his father’s stories that day and interviewed other veterans – from those in World War II to those still active today, and every war in between – about their experiences. He used those interviews as inspiration for the album.

Queensryche even had a very emotional performance of “American Soldier” in its entirety at Fort Benning in Georgia for troops and their families who were being deployed to Iraq that day.

Despite countless memories on the road, 50-year-old Tate said it’s the one performance that’ll stay with him forever.

“Just the feeling there, the emotion, their reaction to the album and seeing their family and their children, everybody holding each other close, uncertain about the next day, having to leave and being separated,” Tate said. “It was a pretty emotional show – one that we’ll probably all go on remembering.”

Like the band’s other releases, “American Soldier” adopts a theme. Each song advances the story from the last.

“That’s intentional,” Tate said of the themed albums. “We tried to make the record speak in accordance with what the topic of the album is about. We tried to kind of paint a musical picture.”

Queensryche originated on the music scene in Seattle nearly two decades ago.

Wilton and Rockenfield were members of the band Cross+Fire, a heavy metal cover band that sang material by Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. Eventually, the band added Jackson and former guitarist Chris DeGarmo (who eventually left the band). They changed the name to The Mob.

When a gig at a local rock festival came up, The Mob called upon Tate, who was the lead singer of a band called Babylon, to be their frontman.

In 1981, The Mob put together sufficient funds to record a demo tape. Once again, Tate was enlisted to help. The group recorded four songs – “Queen of the Reich,” “Nightrider,” “Blinded” and “The Lady Wore Black.” The group brought their demo to various labels and were rejected by all of them.

At the urging of their new manager, The Mob changed their name to Queensryche (some believe it was inspired by the first song on their demo) and the band was officially born.

“Queensryche is kind of a made-up name, it doesn’t really mean anything,” Tate explained. “At the time, we were kind of searching for a band name and that one seemed to kind of roll off the tongue kind of nicely.”

It wasn’t until 1986, four albums after their debut EP, that the band landed on the Billboard Top 10. The album “Operation: Mindcrime and Success,” featuring the band’s first top 10 hit song “Silent Lucidity,” peaked at No. 7 and sold more than 3 million copies in the United States, more than their previous four releases combined. It was also certified silver in Europe.

The band has since experienced much success. They appeared on “MTV Unplugged” in 1992. They toured with Guns-N-Roses, Metallica and Def Leppard among others and have contracts at EMI, Atlantic, Sanctuary and Rhino Records.

But none of that takes the place of where the band wants to be, on stage performing for their fans.

“Hearing the audience reaction to a particular song that strikes them – means a lot to them – a song that they relate to perhaps because it’s something that they experienced in their life or that just speaks to them in a spiritual sense is what we live for,” Tate said. “That’s very rewarding for any artist, when people relate to your work on a personal level and you can see and feel that from the audience and their reactions and how they react as they are playing their song.”

Because of that, don’t expect Queensryche to hang up the instruments anytime soon.

“We’ll do it as long as we’re healthy and able to,” the singer said. “When we do decide to walk away, we want to be remembered for our accomplishments. I think we’ve written a lot of music and I think it’ll translate pretty well over the years. As long as people keep listening to music and find a Queensryche song that they can relate to, then we’ve done what we have set out to do.”