793. Queen / Queen II. 1974. 4/5

Queen has always been amazing in the studio. The way that they record their instruments and their vocals, and layer them over each other a thousand ways and the get the sound onto their albums that they do is remarkable. With equipment in the modern age it is a whole lot easier to do, but to do it well still takes talent. These guys were able to do it on limited studio time and budgets, and come up with amazing sounding albums. It is quite possible that in this regard, Queen II is the standout.

The band's little gimmick for this album was that rather than have Side A and Side B, they chose to have Side White and Side Black, which also had differing personalities of the music as a result. The White side of the album was almost completely composed by Brian May, apart from the last song which was composed by Roger Taylor, while the Black side was completely composed by Freddie Mercury.
After opening with the instrumental piece "Procession" the album moves into "Father and Son". There are so many pieces to this song that it is hard sometimes to take it all in. There are the quiet, slower pieces where the piano or acoustic guitar may be playing, with Freddie's mellow singing his sweet vocals over the top, and other pieces where Roger's drums and Brian's guitar crash in and play in an almost heavy metal way, before coming to a conclusion in a more typical Queen type atmosphere. There's a bit of everything here, and it is not the only song that has this. "White Queen (As It Began)" was apparently written some years earlier by Brian, and once again mixes a multitude of guitars and slightly heavier moments with greater moments of acoustic guitars and of reflection from Freddie. "Some Day One Day" is another of Brian's songs, and on this occasion is completely sung by himself. Again, the acoustic guitars dominate, while another mix of many electrified guitars punctuate through the middle and end of the song. The closing song of the White side is Roger's "The Loser in the End", which he also sings.
The Black side of the album continues the rare mix of acoustic and electrified timing changes along with the multi-layered instrumentalising that preceded it, but perhaps with a greater frenzy. "Ogre Battle" would be a case in point. The beginning of the song is actually the end of the song in reverse, before bursting into a heavy drum beat and guitar riff from Brian and John. Freddie and Roger's vocal melodies stream over the top, while the middle of the song is a cacophony of guitars and Freddie 'ogre' scream. An ogre battle indeed, this ranks as one of Queen's heaviest songs. This then segues into "The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke", by which Freddie was inspired by the painting of the same name by Richard Dadd. The chaotic and frenetic qualities of the song could be accurately portrayed by the painting itself, which surprisingly when you look at it you can feel the way Freddie wrote this song. Terrific. Another segue moves into "Nevermore", another quieter and soothing song following the energy that has been used in the previous two tracks. This short break is then followed by "The March of the Black Queen", where the sound levels are cranked up again, unleashing the boundaries of Queen's every resource. Fast and heavy drums and guitars mix with quiet vocal melodies over acoustic guitar, and multi layered guitars and vocals blend into piano driven choirs of tunes. As they were to do again in the future with similar success, several different pieces of music has been fused together to create a spectacular piece. "Funny How Love Is" follows this, built around a wall of multi-tracked vocals, piano and guitar, with Freddie's lead standing out at the front of the song. To complete the album is the brilliant and timeless "Seven Seas of Rhye", now in its completed form with lyrics, after an uncompleted section appeared on their first album. This was the only single lifted from the album, and was the band's first Top Ten single in the UK.

This has always been a tough album to sell to those that only came into Queen during the 1980's. It is a completely different kind of album than anything they released from this point on. From Sheer Heart Attack onwards there was a more structured way about the songs the band wrote (albeit still in an unconventional way). What you have here is a band that was willing to do things their way, and record songs in a way that emphasised and utilised their many boundless talents to create an album that sounded bigger than an album with four members had any right to be. While it made playing some of the songs live an impracticality, it makes for an amazing sounding album. Not everyone will get it, or be able to appreciate for its brilliance. In retrospect, that is a shame. I for one continue to marvel at the techniques used here, and the material that it provides.

Rating:  Kings will be crowned, the word goes around, from father to son, to son.  4/5