Geoff Tate’s Operation: Mindcrime Announce New Album, ‘The Key’

Geoff Tate stood at the crossroads of prog and metal during his years as the singer for Queensrÿche, and it looks like that's exactly where fans will find him when his new band, Operation: Mindcrime, surfaces with its new studio album this fall.

That LP, titled The Key and scheduled for a Sept. 18 release, finds Tate working with a lineup that includes Queensrÿche vet Kelly Gray as well as former Whitesnake drummer Brian Tichy and ex-AC/DC drummer Simon Wright. The band has filmed a trailer for the album, which you can watch above.

As Tate said in a recent interview, the songs that make up The Key represent the first chapter in a longer story that he envisions encompassing multiple albums. "I love writing stories, and I love creating musical stories, and I wanted to do something that was very in-depth. As it looks, it's gonna take about three records to cover this story," he mused. "It's an international story set in many places around the world. And it's a bit of a mystery that I think will be interesting to follow along to see if they can solve ... I know I always like mysteries; I like to see if I can figure out what's happening and where things are going."

Unsurprisingly, Tate is feeling pretty good about the album. "I think it's gonna be one of the coolest things I've ever done," he predicted. "I'm very excited about the music. It's very intense and very progressive, very heavy, very light ... It kind of covers a lot of ground, which I think a story should."

He shared a few more details in the press release announcing Operation: Mindcrime's deal with Frontiers Records, saying, "I tried to reduce the story and eventually got it down to 37 ideas that needed representing to complete the story. I knew that one record wouldn’t cover it and that it would have to be a trilogy."

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