DATE: Wednesday, August 6, 1997             TAG: 9708060055

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SUE VanHECKE, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

SPONTANEITY PAYS OFF ON NEW ALBUM FOR QUEENSRYCHE

IT WAS A FRIGHTENING moment in the multiplatinum career of Queensryche, the thinking-person's heavy-metal band.

EMI Records, its longtime but financially-troubled label, had released ``Hear in the Now Frontier,'' Queensryche's sixth and latest album, and the band had just embarked on a cross-country tour.

``Our record label went, `Poof,' '' guitarist Michael Wilton said of EMI's unexpected shutdown. ``Fortunately, we have great management with some other bands that are on Virgin Records. So Virgin kind of just picked us up without a deal being signed; they picked up the promotion and the catalog and they're charting us.

``They've been really supportive of us, so hopefully we'd like to sign a deal with them in the future. It's scary being out here and not being signed to anything.''

And proof that even with elaborate, multimedia live shows, provocative concept albums (1988's million-selling ``Operation: Mindcrime'') and a monster hit (1990's soaring ballad ``Silent Lucidity''), there's no such thing as job security in the music biz.

But Queensryche has always gone its own way. Though the band hails from Seattle and could've easily cashed in on the grunge-rock phenomenon, ``that's not our style,'' Wilton said.

``I don't think our fans would've liked that. That was a very smart, very well-calculated trend. Seattle has such a diverse musical palette - that's just one little facet of it. For us, sure, we listen to it and we are affected by it, but it doesn't steer us off into any certain little band width, narrowing our perspective and saying, `We have to play this.' ''

However, with its rawer, leaner production and songs that can stand on their own, ``Hear in the Now Frontier'' does boast a different sort of sound for the admitted perfectionists of Queensryche.

``It's more of a stripped-down approach,'' Wilton said from Charlotte. ``All of our albums have a lot of thought that goes into them, but this one was more, `Let's write the songs and let's not scrutinize every single note.'

``Records in the past, we were freaks as far as tightness. This one we put songs together, did demos and left them. When it was time to record them again in the studio, we just listened and things that we liked we played again and other things we just improvised.

``It kept it a little more spontaneous, a little more fresh. It kept it shining instead of just chopping away at the diamond.''

This year marks a decade and a half together for the Queensryche quintet.

``By other bands' standards, it's an achievement,'' Wilton said. ``I think we're a little more civilized.

``Everybody (in Queensryche) has their own egos, everybody has their own boundaries and everybody recognizes that. There are little bits of outbursts that happen all the time. But we just get along.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

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