Unknown Soldier

It should be said that I’ve never been much of a Queen fan at all, but credit where its due, as the band were truly capable of portraying a sound that at the same time ensconced elements of hard rock, heavy metal, progressive rock and theatrical rock all in a viable commercial sound. The band presented their musical array as a densely layered sound, with operatic overtones and were able to appeal to glamsters, rockers and popsters. The band was always stable with Roger Taylor, John Deacon and Brian May with his coin picking guitar style providing the backbone of the band. But of course it was vocalist Freddie Mercury, who was the undoubted frontman and shining light of the band. The consummate frontman and with a voice to die for, which was full of distinctive power, that was able to saunter from heavy edged rockers to casual humour with equal aplomb. Queen were certainly able to compose a number of great songs with great playing that kept within the unique confines of the band sound, but these songs were often few and far between compared to some of their main rivals back in the 1970s and the band may well have been one of the best advocates around, for knowing how to bulk out their albums with quality filler based around the voice of Freddie Mercury!

The first three albums Queen, Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack were covered in part 1 back in the 1974 year section (see review) So by the time of the band’s fourth studio album A Night at the Opera, the band had made their huge international breakthrough on Sheer Heart Attack, which was a bold and heavy statement from the band and the most solid album in their discography. Like a lot of bands now at the top of the pile, Queen painstakingly worked on A Night at the Opera (named after a Marx Brothers film) and the album would be their most diverse and bombastic offering to date and would soon be regarded by many as their best work! A Night at the Opera truly encompasses all the diverse aspects of the band and shot them and producer Roy Thomas-Baker into the stratosphere. Personally I think much of the album’s prestige lays in “Bohemian Rhapsody” as I’d be hard pressed to believe that the average music listener would fully appreciate a lot of the rest of the material on offer here, which ranges from moments of diverse brilliant originality to typical Queen filler. The following year’s A Day at the Races is largely seen as the high-profile sequel to A Night at the Opera, but tends to have a lighter overall tone than the previous album and in my opinion it’s probably the album most representative of the band and easiest on the ear. The same couldn’t be said though for 1977’s News of the World, which despite having a great album cover and containing two of the bands best known anthem tracks, is an often brazenly harder affair that despite its diversity, just hangs together in places and is too disjointed to be seen as a great album.

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