antiMusic.com: Queen Week: Sheer Heart Attack [2011 Remaster] Review

Queen Week: Sheer Heart Attack [2011 Remaster]
by Dan MacIntosh

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Sheer Heart Attack is easily the best early Queen album. The band had not quite grown into its complicated vocal stage, but it had at least outgrown its '60s blues-rock musical phase and fantasy literature lyrical stage. It also featured some absolutely wonderful songs.

The track "Killer Queen" foreshadowed great things to come. It found Freddie Mercury behaving like the beautiful freak he would eventually become. The song's lyric is also a fascinating character study; one that really makes you want to know more about his song subject.

This album also has some fine hard rock songs. "Flick of the Wrist" and especially "Stone Cold Crazy" simply burn with metallic passion.

Then there's "Bring Back That Leroy Brown." On it, Queen showed the nerve to include a decidedly non-hard rock song, on an otherwise hard rock album. Just dig its banjo part! Obviously, the band had fun doing it. Thankfully, the audience should enjoy it just as much.

"She Makes Me" is a little out of character for Queen, in that it's a psychedelic dirge. The group rarely did anything quite like that. It's not Queen being Queen, but it's a really cool thing, nonetheless. "Now I'm Here" might come off like a test for stereo separation, as it bounces back and forth between the left and right speakers. Once again, however, it finds the group experimenting and having fun, and that's not a bad thing.

There are so many different styles going on with this album, it makes the head spin � even to this day. It is the one early album that clearly signaled potential future greatness for Queen. Let's all be glad Queen more than lived up to that initial promise.

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