Up until a few months ago, I always thought that Queen II was the 'Difficult' one. Virtually unlistenable, very few of the songs stood out, mainly because each song had about seven or eight different sub-sections that melded into one another. Thick with guitars, but with production that flattened everything down to a horrible mud stew. This was the album that we (my family) picked up in WH Smiths' £3 sale after Christmas one year and listened to once or twice before forgetting.

But things have changed!

I couldn't honestly say if the remastering has made all the difference, but these days I find Queen II a far more accessible and pleasurable listening experience.



Procession (Instrumental)
Sinister 'heartbeat' style drumming, then some nice guitar work from Mr May. I like the way the guitar part sort-of echoes 'Father To Son'.

I suppose at the time some listeners might have been baffled by the heavily processed guitar sound. It sounds a bit like a church organ, but there's a different quality to it, rougher and more electronic. We're so familiar with it now, because it's the sound that defines Brian's guitar playing.
5/10

Father to Son
"A word in your ear, from Father to Son"
Great introduction, building up to a hard and heavy rocker. This song is pretty consistent within itself and has a couple of easily memorable repetitions. This means that 'Father To Son' is more likely to stick in your head than some of the other more varied tracks. As Si said, Queen are really starting to work together.
6/10

White Queen (As It Began)
"The White Queen walks and the night grows pale, stars of lovingness in her hair"
This one starts off as a quiet and beguiling piece, there's a couple of places where it erupts into a heavier plodding sound though. There's a brilliant slightly Spanish sounding guitar solo around 3 minutes in.

The song as a whole sounds regal and melancholic. It's rather beautiful. There's that cinematic extreme of emotion that's implied in the music and brought out in the lyrics. This one is almost operatic in it's effect.
7/10

Some Day One Day
"You Never heard my song before the music was too loud" says Brian. Is he complaining that his singing gets lost in the mix?
Things calm down a bit with 'Some Day One Day'. I can imagine Freddie filling in on the acoustic guitar for this one. Everything is heavily processed and flanged, which gives the song a drifting, dream-like feel. Unless this was an accidental effect due to too much multi-tracking? I think it would work better played with less effects.

That said, Brian May's guitar work sound is damn fine on this song.

The Loser in the End
"It's not so long since you were young"
Oh Roger!

Although this doesn't seem to quite fit on the album in some ways, it does echo 'Father To Son' in that the lyrics describe a mother-to-son relationship. This is a straight down the line rocker with Roger's punky, Led Zeppelin snarl defining it's sound.

The drumming is naturally superb, but everybody else's contribution seems a little uninspired. It's undoubtedly the weakest song on the album, but it only feels that way because it's out of place. If anyone had the courage, a compilation of all of the songs with a Roger Taylor vocal would make for an interesting stand-alone album!

Black Side
Take a five minute break, people!

This is an album of two halves! It was made for vinyl with a perfect divide down the middle. The writing credits show that has been by either May or Taylor. Now we get a rub-a-dub of Freddie...

Ogre Battle
"The ogre-men are still inside the two-way mirror mountain"
Oh no! Something is wrong, is my record player broken?

The Freddie Mercury side arrives without compromise. That reversed-music sound at the start is a great big slap in the face to the listener, saying that Queen are in town and they're going to rock hard. The tempo of Ogre Battle is ludicrously fast and doesn't let up.

It's perfect for a song about giant monsters throwing rocks and trees at each other. The tone is apocalyptic and fantastical. Brilliant stuff! I particularly love the 'Ah-ah-ah-ah-AHHHHH!'s!!
8/10


The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke
"Taterdemallion and a Junketer"
And then things get even better! The lyrics to 'Fairy Feller's' are almost totally indecipherable without recourse to the inlay sleeve.

There's so much going on in this song, it's hard to believe that it's only 2.40 long. There's a sense that they've got to try to pack in as much as possible goddamit before the time limit runs out! There's a huge amount of urgency and attack in the way that the harpsichord is attacked from the intro onwards.

It's a great reflection of the painting by Richard Dadd:

Dense, over-populated and utterly bewitching.

What a ponce. 9/10

Nevermore
"Now I haven't anything to grow"
This might be the first Queen song without any rock elements at all. In a way it's another precursor to Bohemian Rhapsody here, as Queen discover they can do a beautiful piano/vocal ballad, underlined by Brian May's guitar and the choral harmonies of the group.

A great song of love and life lost; one of my absolute favourites from this era. 10/10

The March of the Black Queen
"Put them in the cellar with the naughty boys, A little N****r sugar then a rub-a-dub-a baby oil"
If Nevermore was a little under-developed this song gets everything and the castle kitchen sinks thrown in. Fie-fo the Black Queen!

Seriously, this song might be the most perverse and mental thing that Queen have ever produced. The only reason it gets overlooked is because it's on dense old Queen II. It seems a shame to keep going on about Bohemian Rhapsody, but it's all here, this is the genesis point of the ideas that would drive Queen to the top of the charts. It even has virtually the same 'slowing down' ending at 5.50, yet here it's a trick! There's still another 30 seconds to cram in!

Everything is turned up a bit for this song, the guitar solos are a bit more memorable, there's a great 'slow and sweet' passage in the middle and the nonsensical lyrics are trying harder and boiling away at a lick that makes them impossible to understand.

9/10 (when you're in the right mood!)

Funny How Love Is
"Funny how love is coming home in time for tea!"
I also love this one. There's a great shuffling beat and a hypnotic drone in the harmonies, giving it a washed-out feel that drives the song forward. The constant changes upwards in pitch also show off Freddie's remarkable vocal range.

The only down side is that it's a build-up song that doesn't quite go anywhere. Everything goes up, and up, and up, then it fades out. Yet the use of repetition means that this is another song that is more likely to stick with you from the album.
8/10

Seven Seas of Rhye
"Oh I do like to be beside the sea side"
When I didn't like 'Queen' and 'Queen II' so much, I always looked at 'Seven Seas of Rhye' as your reward for finishing each album. 'Queen' wasn't that hard to get through, so you only got a short instrumental version. 'Queen II' was a real slog, so to thank you for your efforts you got the full single version that you knew from 'Greatest Hits'.

The piano playing is more assured this time round. There's no fumbles! The musicianship on display here is astonishing, frankly. Everything is so fast, yet nailed down perfectly to the beat.

There's so much that I love about this song, but I'd just like to pick out the line where Freddie says 'I challenged the might Titan and his Troubadours' and Brian May chips in a little 'fanfare' on his guitar. The fanfare slips right into the rhythm of the song, yet accentuates and compliments the lyrics perfectly.

The lyrics are great too! 'Be gone with you, you shod and shady senators' and 'Can you hear me you peers and privy counsellors?' show some lovely alliteration. Plus they roll off the tongue in such a satisfying way AND they use strange and archaic language that you wouldn't get anywhere else in pop music!

Just astounding.
10/10.

Bonus Tracks
See What a Fool I've Been (BBC Session July 1973) [Remix 2011]
Queen do an American bluesy-rock number, singing about Georgia and Greyhound buses! Perhaps they'd just been on tour? Still, it shows how versatile the band were. There's even a hint of gospel in this one.

White Queen (As It Began) [Live at Hammersmith Odeon, December 1975]
"Ok Darlings, this is a little... a delicate little number called White Queen."
For those of you who thought that the Queen II sound could only be achieved through use of extensive over-dubbing, here's White Queen sounding more-or-less exactly the same live. How the f*** did they do it?!
This is probably actually better than the album version, Brian gives a better guitar solo and the piano playing is much more to the fore. It sounds a bit like Pink Floyd.

Seven Seas of Rhye (Instrumental Mix)
Oh, this is MAGNIFICENT! Seven Seas of Rhye without the 'Seaside' outro and no vocals. One of my favourite thing about the re-issues has been the instrumental versions of well-known songs and this is one of the absolute best.

Nevermore (BBC Session, April 1974)
Same as the album version, but sounding a little more 'complete' on it's own.

See What a Fool I've Been (B-Side Version February 1974)
Er... see above. Except... the American howl is binned... and it features Freddie's campest ever vocals. 'Oh you naughty thing you', 'he just kept on barking, the vicious thing' and 'See you later sailor boy' get added to the mix, along with a high-pitched 'Now hit it. Like That.' If he'd been signing like this all the time, I think people might have twigged a bit earlier! Brilliant and hilarious.

Now I've given a lot of high marks in these reviews so far. But rest assured, there are some 1's and 2's to come. Maybe even on Sheer Heart Attack!