Vocalist GEOFF TATE (QUEENSRŸCHE) is featured in a new interview with TimesLeader.com discussing his new album, Frequency Unknown and the 25th anniversary of Operation: Mindcrime. An excerpt from the discussion is available below:

Q: Is there a particular tour with Queensrÿche that stands out as one of your most memorable?

GT: "Well, they’re all very memorable. Every tour is different and unique. The tour I’m on right now is very different because I’m playing with all these different people; some of them I’ve never played with before, and that’s a wonderful experience. I love that. I love collaborating on music with people, especially really great players that give the music their own interpretation. As a writer, you have an idea of what you’re trying to get across when you write a song, and then you hand it to somebody else to play and they have a different interpretation, and sometimes, at least in my experience, that interpretation is quite different from your own and you’re pleasantly surprised at how they seeit and how they view or how they hear it. It’s refreshing."

"Of tours I’ve done in the past, the Promised Land tour in 1984 was a real special tour for me. It was our first experience with putting on a theatrical presentation where we had multiple sets and we had film screens with imagery that interacted with the audience. We broke down that fourth wall between the performer and the audience for the first time, and I really, really enjoyed that."

Q: Does playing Operation: Mindcrime straight through each night bring back any memories from 25 years ago? Does it make you nostalgic at all?

GT: "I guess I’m not very nostalgic as a person. I enjoy it immensely, playing this album on this last leg of the tour. It’s actually the first time that Mindcrime has been performed live, and by that I mean the musicians actually playing the instruments. With Queensrÿche, we were always very limited. We had grand ideas and we didn’t want to limit ourselves in the studio by saying, 'We can’t do that live, so let’s not do it on the record.' We didn’t want to think in those terms, so when it came time to play the music live, it would require more people on the stage performing than what we could afford, for example, and so what we did was we went the click track route."

"When we first started doing this, it was a much more primitive kind of method, but the click track would dictate the song and then we had flown in parts, sections like orchestra and backup vocals and things like that, on tape that would play to fill out the sound and make it sound more like the record. On the plus side, it was very economical to do that. But on the downside, it didn’t give us any room to experiment with the songs. We couldn’t improvise… You’re not even listening to each other play anymore, so you lose that human element of a band that’s coming together and you’re not playing with each other anymore. With the presentation I’m involved with now with the guys, we’re playing everything live… It’s a much more organic presentation of the music, which for me is incredible because I haven’t had that before. It’s a whole new frontier. It’s a whole new feel to the music, which I find to be incredibly exciting."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Juno Award-winning artist SASS JORDAN (pictured below) has joined Geoff Tate's Queensrÿche to sing the part of Sister Mary on the 25th Anniversary Operation: Mindcrime Tour. Sass is the winner of Billboard's Best Female Rock Vocalist award, she has toured and/or worked with many music heavyweights, including: AEROSMITH, ALICE COOPER, CHEAP TRICK, VAN HALEN, CARLOS SANTANA and JOE COCKER.

Catch Queensrÿche and Sass live:

June

6 - Philadelphia, PA - Theatre Of Living Arts
7 - Providence, RI - Lupos
8 - Hartford, CT - The Webster
9 - Boston, MA - The Wilbur Theatre
11 - Luzerne, PA - Brews Brothers West
12 - Lancaster, PA - Chameleon Club
13 - Falls Church, VA - The State Theatre
14 - Greensburg, PA - The Palace Theatre
15 - Detroit, MI - The Fillmore
16 - Cleveland, OH - House Of Blues
18 - South Bend, IN - Club Fever
19 - Columbus, OH - Newport Music Hall
20 - Nashville, TN - War Memorial Auditorium
21 - Tulsa, OK - River Spirit Event Center
22 - Concho, OK - Lucky Star Casino
23 - New Orleans, LA - Tipitinas
25 - Amarillo, TX - Midnight Rodeo
26 - Fort Collins, CO - Aggie Theater
28 - Pauma Valley, CA - Casino Pauma
29 - Seattle, WA - The Moore Theater