Track Listing

1. Procession
2. Father To Son
3. White Queen (As It Began)
4. Some Day One Day
5. Loser In The End
6. Ogre Battle
7. Fairy Feller's Master Stroke
8. Nevermore
9. March Of The Black Queen
10. Funny How Love Is
11. Seven Seas Of Rhye

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1535 in Music
• Released on: 1994-04-05
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
A mesmerising and at times ferocious album, reportedly much-admired by Beck and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. Coming hard on the heels of their eponymous debut--which found them a little too much under the spell of Led Zeppelin--this was the first work to approximate, in sonic terms, the group's loftier ambitions: the group and producer Roy Thomas Baker painstakingly multi-tracking vocals and guitar tracks, so as to achieve an appropriately orchestral richness of sound. The subsequent album, Sheer Heart Attack, would see them borrow from Noel Coward and the English music hall, but the sources here are more self-consciously literary; and while the result can occasionally seem too precious by half--lyrically, tracks like "The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke" and "Ogre Battle" (both Freddie Mercury compositions) betray the influence of too much Tolkien and Richard Dadd--in terms of musicianship, arrangements and melodic invention, this constitutes a staggering achievement. --Andrew McGuire

Customer Reviews

QUEEN II
If you know little of this beloved British band beyond their three Greatest Hits albums and the bombast of their Eighties stadium shows, then this extraordinary record may have eluded you. Time to make amends. Queen II is one of the most ambitious, decadent, preposterous and exhilarating encounters between man and recording studio in the history of popular music. 'A Night At The Opera' from 1975 may be more balanced, considered and mature, but for sheer bloody bravado and musical abandon, Queen II takes all comers. It should be part of the national curriculum, awarded the Victoria Cross, shot into space for alternative life forms to marvel at. It's Brian May's favourite Queen album and it will become yours too. Seeing it offered up for mere pounds is nothing short of a crime. Recommending it, my greatest service to you. Oh, and you'll need some headphones...

Becoming my favourite Queen album
Sheer Heart Attack was the first Queen album I heard back in '75 a few months after it had come out. Soon after that came A Night at the Opera and it was a while before I looked back to this album and that was when I was heavily into punk so didn't really get it.
It was only when Mojo magazine did a brilliant article on Queen II a few years ago that I decided to re-invest and I'm so glad I did. You'll read elsewhere that Seven Seas of Rhye seems almost misplaced at the end of this CD and whilst thats true it's more like an encore after the main show. I recommend this album to anyone who's curious but not as a first Queen purchase. I would work backwards from ANATO and then buy Day at the Races.

Startling!
Considering this was only Queen's second LP (remember, this WAS the early 70's!), the song-writing, playing and production were nothing short of a work of genius!
Dispaying all the ambition which would propel them to their next two great LPs by momentum alone, this is a towering work which should at the top of any Queen fan's wish-list