O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Queensryche Avoids Worst Metal Cliches; Music Is Still Boring

Queensryche has won praise for using heavy metal to get across heavy concepts instead of the usual heavy doses of sexist swill and party-hearty blather.

It was not the Seattle band’s serious aims that turned its show Friday night at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre into such tiresomely heavy going. The problem was musical: While Queensryche may have stretched somewhat the bounds of what heavy metal can say, there is nothing striking or original about how the band says it.

Singer Geoff Tate has an impressively clean and capacious set of pipes, but so does Roto-Rooter. Tate hews to an operatic brand of vocalizing that, in its unrelenting bombast, is the most stilted and annoying form of rock singing there is.

Queensryche’s playing, though proficient, rehashed the standard metallic strategies: pound-and-chug rhythms and stentorian guitar solos and harmonies.

For anyone who thinks that a rock band should at least faintly acknowledge rock’s blues and folk roots from time to time, 20 minutes of Queensryche was about enough.

Two hours was almost enough to foment the sort of violent rebellion that the band sings about in its concept album, “Operation: Mindcrime.”

“Mindcrime,” played in its entirety, formed the core of the show. While a crowd of Queensryche fans (announced at 12,000) ate it up, many of them singing along with a vengeance, Tate and company made surprisingly little of their concept. Backdrop projections might have helped color in themes or characters, but they were not used. And a bit of strategically placed commentary from Tate might have helped everyone get a better grasp of the sketchy plot of his opus. But when he paused during the “Mindcrime” sequence, it was not to explain anything but to pump up the crowd with orchestrated hollering that had nothing to do with the concept album.

Part of the problem is that “Mindcrime”--a conspiratorial potboiler that centers on a brainwashed assassin a la “The Manchurian Candidate”--fails to establish its characters or its story very well, so there is really not much to color in with visuals or spoken bits. But why play the whole thing in sequence if you’re not going to enhance what’s on the album?

If nothing else, the fervent reception Queensryche got was heartening because it showed that metal fans are not all foolish escapists but also thinking people who thirst for music that tries to be substantial, serious and relevant to what they see happening in the world around them.

Warrant, a Los Angeles band of foolish escapists, put on a clumsily staged show. No rock band has ever spent more time on its knees than Warrant’s members did in their 45-minute set, but maybe that’s what you have to do when you don’t know how to dance. Singer Jani (a guy) Lane has a robust voice, and Warrant did come up with some decent bits of raunchiness and the occasional catchy chorus, but the best one, from “Down Boys,” was a rehashed cross between the Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” and Ian Hunter’s “When the Daylight Comes.”

Memo to Warrant and all other rockers: a concert stage is not a recording studio, so stow the electronically boosted backing vocals and try to sing ‘em straight as best you can. Three voices should not sound like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Leatherwolf, an Orange County band, made good before the hometown fans despite being limited to a 25-minute set. The band’s earnest, energetic performance was highlighted by “Hideaway,” the catchiest, most varied song heard all evening, and “Black Knight,” the zooming instrumental that followed it. Michael Olivieri offered strong, throaty vocals. Except for a few digressions into pointless whining, Leatherwolf’s multipart guitar solos were well constructed and well executed. Points off, though, for electronically goosing those backing vocals.