Former Queensrÿche singer Geoff Tate to perform signature concept album in its entirety at San Antonio show

For a while now, it’s been a trend for touring bands to play fan-favorite albums live in their entirety. The practice seems especially suited to concept albums, which tell a whole story in sequence.

Queensrÿche’s Operation: Mindcrime stands as both a high point in the progressive metal act’s canon and as a concept album lauded for its ambitious storytelling.

Little surprise then that former Queensrÿche frontman Geoff Tate is performing the 1988 album in full during his current tour, which stops at the Aztec Theatre on Saturday, March 29. Guitarist Adrian Vandenberg will open.

The politically charged, operatic LP came at a formative moment in Queensrÿche’s career, ushering the band out of an early era indebted to Iron Maiden and Judas Priest-indebted era into its final form as a prog-metal pioneer. Tate’s vocals remained a constant over that evolution, soaring at sky-high pitches above the act’s dual guitars.

Operation: Mindcrime’s story centers around a shadowy group carrying out political assassinations. It focuses on three characters: Dr. X, the mysterious leader of the group; Nikki, an addict being manipulated by Dr. X and his followers; and Sister Mary, a nun and fellow addict drawn into the murderous events.

While Queensrÿche released its most commercially successful LP, Empire, a couple of years later, Operation: Mindcrime remains the crown jewel in the group’s catalog. The band played the concept album in its entirety several times, including, ironically enough, on the headlining tour to support Empire. An Operation: Mindcrime II even followed in 2006.

But things fell apart in 2012 as Tate and Queensrÿche parted ways in one of rock’s messiest and most public breakups. The remaining members kept the name and recruited Tate sound-alike Todd LaTorre, while Tate embarked on a solo career, the live side of which has largely focused on Queensrÿche material.

We talked to Tate via Zoom about the upcoming tour, the state of the world and, yes, his pending release Mindcrime III. Tate told us the album will be released in songs or clusters of songs over the next year or two and have “all the bells and whistles,” including the dialogue snippets that were a big part of the first two Mindcrime records.

According to Tate, the new album is “very heavy” and features complex rhythms: “We’re fascinated with slide rules and calculators.” He even added that comparisons to Swedish prog-metal band Meshuggah and its djent descendants are close to the mark.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the enduring appeal of Operation: Mindcrime?

Gosh, I like to think that it’s because the music is so good that people just can’t get enough of it. (Laughs.) And maybe there is an element of truth to that, but I think it’s kind of a timeless story. Classic themes from history. Good versus evil, the right against the left. It has religion, it has politics, it has people vying for power. And I think a lot of people … wanna come out and just see if I can still sing it. (Laughs.) I’m kind of curious about that myself.

One way to find out.

One way. Trial by fire, right?

This is being billed as the last time the album will be performed completely. Why let it go now?

I’ve performed the album in its entirety, I think, three times in my career. And I really did wanna do it one more time while I’m strong and feeling great and singing well. And we wanted to have kind of a place for Mindcrime III to sit, you know, in a chronological sense. We’re playing excerpts from Mindcrime II, and we thought we’d kind of bookshelf the songs from III in there as well — to sort of give the audience the full picture of what the story is. The Mindcrime III story is the [original] Mindcrime story, but from the perspective of Dr. X. We get to know him and see who this guy is.

Is there a character that you particularly identify with?

Oh, gosh. Well, actually, two days ago, I was in Amsterdam. My wife and I had gone there for a couple of days off, and we were walking down the street, and we happened to stop and look for directions on our phone. I looked up, and I was standing in front of the Club Paradiso, which is where I was when the character of Mary came to me. I was in the club. It was four in the morning. And I was kind of slumped over my drink, just looking around the place. There was a woman dressed as a nun. She might have been a nun for as much as I know. She was dancing to this intense, hard techno music. But she was doing it in slow motion. And she was clutching a ratty-looking teddy bear. Maybe she found it at a dumpster outside or something. Tears were running down her face. I got out my notebook and I wrote down everything I could see. I really relate to that, that despondent, helpless and hopeless feeling, even though I guess I’ve never really felt that way myself. But the look and the way that that woman was holding herself, she was hopeless and helpless and despondent. How can I say it? She was just the exhibit of that. Nikki is … . Sometimes I like him, sometimes I hate him. He’s weak and unable to pull himself up by his bootstraps. And, then, sometimes he kind of comes through with flying colors, just surprising himself. But Dr. X, I really have gotten into his character and have had a lot of fun exploring him. Seeing where he goes, where he has been.

Your style of performance has a theatrical flair. If you were going to stage someone else’s concept album, what would you choose?

Would I have a budget? (Laughs.)

Unlimited! Let’s have fun with this.

I would immediately visit Kate Bush and talk her into performing The Hounds of Love. In my opinion, that’s one of the all-time great albums. Brilliant record. Coincidentally, James Barton, who produced Operation: Mindcrime and Empire, was the engineer on The Hounds of Love. Not that I’m prejudiced because of that. (Laughs.) Hounds is a brilliant album and it deserves to be seen in a live presentation. She’s never done it. I think it would be phenomenal.

I was hoping you would say Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

I saw that tour [when Genesis performed the full LP live]. I couldn’t even imagine it differently. It was phenomenal. That was one of the first concert tours I ever saw. The first one was Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies tour. I had some amazing first experiences with concerts back in the day.

Except for both being concept albums, Lamb and Mindcrime couldn’t be more different. Mindcrime has dialogue, and the story is unmissable. Lamb is abstract. If someone didn’t tell you, “There’s a story here,” I’m not sure most people would know.

Yeah, it would just be shocking and considered avant garde. And somewhat highbrow. (Laughs.)

If Operation: Mindcrime was placed in a time capsule and dug up in a hundred years, what would you want people to know or understand about America in the 1980s?

America is a fascinating study. There’s nothing like it. Mammoth, you know? I laugh because I have a lot of Irish friends. My daughter, Emily, married an Irishman. They have just over 5 million people in the whole country. But in America we have almost 350 million to deal with. To protect, to serve, to feed. It’s a whole different thing. You can’t compare a lot of these countries to America, which is so diverse culturally. It’s its own animal. It doesn’t change quickly. It takes decades for things to get worked out in America. I think that the ’80s — maybe as a jumping-off point — you see a few changes now, but a lot of it is still the same, you know? It fluctuates back and forth socially and economically even. What they would take away, if we use the time capsule model, is that the album is a good marker — a point of where we were in the ’80s. And a lot hasn’t changed, is what I’m trying to say. You could drop the record now, and it would probably have the same impact as it did in the ’80s.

I agree, though, oddly, there might have been a time in the 2000s when it felt like things had changed.

It swings back and forth, you know? Which is strange, given the amount of people we have. You’d think it would be on a course. You’d think it would be moving like mass, with a certain velocity, at some point. A generation is what, 20 or 25 years? To a guy my age, that seems like the blink of an eye. I was born in ’59 and I remember the Kennedy administration and the race riots of the early ’60s happening when I was a kid. I saw it on the news and it made an impact on me. And that was in my lifetime. Look where we are now. In some ways it’s really progressed, and in other ways it’s actually gone backwards.

$41.75 and up, 8 p.m. Saturday, March 29, Aztec Theatre, 104 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 812-4355, theaztectheatre.com.

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This article appears in Mar 19 – Apr 1, 2025.