The Eclipse channel on YouTube has uploaded video of QUEENSRŸCHE‘s July 18 concert at Sycuan Casino Resort in El Cajon, California. Check out the clips in the YouTube playlist below. (Note: After each song, the YouTube player automatically jumps to the next song in the playlist.)
According to Setlist.fm, the setlist for the show was as follows:
01. Queen Of The Reich
02. Operation: Mindcrime
03. Walk In The Shadows
04. The Lady Wore Black
05. Breaking The Silence
06. I Don’t Believe In Love
07. The Mission
08. Warning
09. Behind The Walls
10. Take Hold Of The Flame
11. Silent Lucidity
12. Jet City Woman
13. Screaming In Digital
Encore:
14. Empire
15. Eyes Of A Stranger
Earlier in the month, QUEENSRŸCHE announced that it will hit the road this fall on the “Volume And Vengeance Tour” alongside special guests ACCEPT. The trek will kick off on November 7 in Denver, Colorado at Summit and will conclude on December 20 in Temecula, California at Pechanga Theater Casino.
QUEENSRŸCHE vocalist Todd La Torre commented: “We are extremely excited to announce our upcoming 2025 U.S. fall tour with metal legends ACCEPT!
“For years and years both bands have discussed wanting to do a proper tour together, and the time has finally arrived. And while we both have our unique stylistic approaches, both bands continue to have a deep and revered history, shared by an amazing fanbase that is sure to enjoy this moment in time.
“So it is with great pleasure that we invite you to experience the ‘Volume And Vengeance Tour’ with QUEENSRŸCHE and ACCEPT, and be part of metal musical history with us! See you soon!!!”
In a recent interview with Sonoridades Inc., QUEENSRŸCHE guitarist Michael Wilton spoke about La Torre, who joined the group in 2012 as the replacement for QUEENSRŸCHE‘s original vocalist Geoff Tate. Michael said: “[Todd has] helped keep us relevant. He’s a great songwriter, but he’s not just a vocalist and a lyric writer. He’s a drummer. He can play guitar. He can speak to you and communicate to you as a musician, not just a singer. I mean, he grew up in Florida in the metal era, and he’s got a lot of that influence, but he’s very melodic as well. And he’s got a killer voice. So I think it’s just something that in the evolution of post-QUEENSRŸCHE, it’s, like, we are still doing it and kicking ass. And hopefully we’ll have something new out in the future.”
Regarding the progress of the songwriting and recording sessions for the follow-up to 2022’s “Digital Noise Alliance”, Michael said: “Right now we’re writing. We’re doing so much touring right now, it’s hard to figure out where we will have a block of time to make an album. But before we went to Europe, we brought Zeuss [Chris Harris], our producer, down to Florida, and we worked on some ideas. We just started writing. And that’s where we’re at right now.”
Wilton also talked about QUEENSRŸCHE drummer Casey Grillo, who joined the band in 2017 as the replacement for the original QUEENSRŸCHE drummer Scott Rockenfield. He said: ”[Casey is] an amazing player and he brings so much to QUEENSRŸCHE. He respects the songs, but he’s such a dynamic player. He’s very talented, and he helps in the writing process as well. So, yeah, he’s been in the band over five years, six years, or whatever it is, seven, and, yeah, he’s great.”
In October 2021, Rockenfield filed a lawsuit against Wilton and bassist Eddie Jackson, alleging, among other things, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and wrongful discharge. A few months later, Wilton and Jackson filed a countersuit against Rockenfield, accusing him of abandoning his position as a member of the band and misappropriating the group’s assets to his own personal benefit. That dispute has since been settled out of court.
This past April, La Torre was asked by Chile’s iRock.cl how QUEENSRYCHE‘s sound has changed since he joined the group 13 years ago as the replacement for Tate. He responded: “I think that the band kind of got its sound back, more of the roots, the heavier kind of sound that QUEENSRYCHE was known for early on. There was a long period of time where the music got more adult contemporary and less hard rock and heavy metal and progressive and all of the different elements that QUEENSRŸCHE was kind of known for. So I think me being in the band — I mean, it could have been any other singer — has allowed these guys to completely write whatever they wanna write without it being turned down as being too heavy, for example, ’cause that had happened.”
He continued: “I love the old classic stuff. We perform all the songs in the standard tunings like they were recorded, so there’s nothing downtuned that changes the way they sound. I think that’s helped contribute to kind of the resurgence of the band. But we just write songs, and sometimes I think, ‘Oh, I wanna write a masterpiece of a song like ‘Roads To Madness’‘ or a great song like ‘Take Hold Of The Flame’ or — I don’t know — songs off of ‘[Operation:] Mindcrime’, for example. But we all have a great time and the chemistry in the band is perfect. We all are super, super close. We all get along off the stage so well that it really kind of… I think that the contribution that I bring in is the jokes, the laughter, the creativity with music and art idea, artistic ideas with album covers and video concepts and that kind of thing. I don’t know. That’s the best way I could answer it, is I’m just one fifth of QUEENSRŸCHE. But the band is in a very healthy state.”
Regarding how he sees the future of QUEENSRŸCHE, Todd said: “Oh, man. I kind of see the future as kind of what we’re doing still. A lot of bands have retired, and we’re still out there. There’s nothing in the future that I see of the band retiring. I mean, we play about a hundred shows a year. So probably more of the same — just performing live shows, writing new songs and making new records and promoting our art that way. But, I mean, really it boils down to the live concert. That’s really what we are now.”
In a separate interview with Brazil’s Monsters Of Rock, Todd was asked which “unexplored musical directions” he would like to see QUEENSRŸCHE go in on the band’s upcoming follow-up to “Digital Noise Alliance”. He said: “[We’re] kind of [doing] the same thing as what we’ve been doing. I mean, we don’t go in writing a record with a preconceived idea. We just get in a room and [go], ‘Hey, show me your guitar parts. What do you have in your mind?’ And we kind of all get together in a room and just see what happens in real time. So as far as unexplored musical directions… Personally, I’d love to hear more clean guitar on the next record, maybe some more spacious stuff, some more clean guitar. Orchestration is always fun to work with. It’s very huge and cinematic sounding. So those are fun things to play with. Maybe some different percussion things would be interesting to play around with again.
“But, gosh, after 40-plus years, I think without completely changing the band, the band’s style of music, I don’t know that there’s really any too much unexplored musical directions,” he continued. “I mean, QUEENSRŸCHE‘s kind of done a lot within the large space that QUEENSRŸCHE has to run around in. I mean, if we were to do something — we wouldn’t write a hip-hop song, we wouldn’t write a death metal song. So within the confines of what QUEENSRŸCHE kind of is, as diverse as it as it is, I don’t know what kind of unexplored musical directions there would be. On the next one, I mean, I would love to, like I say, play around with some other clean guitar sounds, maybe some more interesting percussion things — like the song ‘I Am I’ had some really neat percussion things going on.”
Guitarist Mike Stone, who rejoined QUEENSRŸCHE in 2021, contributed guitar solos to the band’s latest studio album.
Since late May 2021, Stone has been handling second-guitar duties in QUEENSRŸCHE, which announced in July 2021 that longtime guitarist Parker Lundgren was exiting the group to focus on “other business ventures.”
Stone originally joined QUEENSRŸCHE for the 2003 album “Tribe” and stayed with the band for six years before leaving the group.
