Queensryche, ‘Get Started’ – Song Review

If 'Get Started' represents Queensryche putting their best foot forward, longtime fans may want to take two steps back and approach the forthcoming 'Dedicated to Chaos' album with extreme caution.

While 'Get Started' is far from horrible, it's also not great and in fact might be the most bland piece of music that Queensrÿche has released to date. Problem No. 1 is the paint-by-number lyrics delivered by Geoff Tate. Although he is in good voice, you can only do so much with a chorus like “Get started/ Oh, I'm just getting started/ Yeah, I'm just getting warmed up/ Life's too short for slowing down/ You ain't seen nothing yet.”

Tate says the new album is “kind of like an 'Empire' record set 25 years in the future,” and calls it a “headphones” type of album with a definite emphasis on the rhythm section of bassist Eddie Jackson and drummer Scott Rockenfield.

Jackson and the veteran timekeeper, both of whom also wrote a lot of the songs on this new album, are rock solid as usual. There's a real snap to the percussive elements on 'Get Started' that has been restored thanks to former 'Rÿche guitarist/producer Kelly Gray who returns to produce the new album.

Another piece of good news is that while a lot of Gray's production work with Queensrÿche in the past had a muddy quality to it, the sonics of 'Get Started' indicate a sound that is indeed closer from a production standpoint to the classic 'Empire' sound.

With Queensrÿche being traditionally theme and concept-based on their albums, it's difficult to fully judge their singles out of context from the records that they live on. But with each successive album released by the band, it becomes more and more apparent that they need a real producer to manage the concepts and run quality control on the songs – and that producer should be allowed to say "no" once in a while.

It seems unlikely that a song like 'Get Started' would have made it any further than a b-side in their heyday, but in 2011, it's the lead single from their new album. Exactly how much chaos actually will be present on 'Dedicated to Chaos' remains to be seen.

Listen to 'Get Started'