GEOFF TATE On His Time In QUEENSRŸCHE: 'We Weren't Really Friends; We Were Business Associates'

The Metal Gods Meltdown recently conducted an interview with former QUEENSRŸCHE and current OPERATION: MINDCRIME singer Geoff Tate. You can now listen to the chat using the SoundCloud widget below.

Asked if performing QUEENSRŸCHE songs now that he is no longer a member the band fills him with great sadness, Tate said: "No, not at all. Nothing has really changed for me, honestly, in a lot of areas, really. I write music, I record albums and I go out on tour and perform music that I've written, and really the only changes are the people that I'm performing with. And I like performing and I like collaborating with different people on projects and songwriting; I really enjoy that a lot. And I've worked with a lot of different people over the years and had great, great times [and] great creative moments working with people."

He continued: "Being in QUEENSRŸCHE, it was a strange, strange sort of relationship. We weren't really friends, you know — we were business associates. We had a wonderful entity that we shared called QUEENSRŸCHE, but it wasn't an equal sort of partnership as far as involvement goes. You know, so there wasn't a real camaraderie amongst everybody in the band."

Tate: "No, I don't think about [my former bandmates] at all. Maybe that sounds horrible to some people, 'cause maybe they have a different viewpoint on what the band was to them, and that's understandable — people make up stuff all the time that they want to believe. But from my perspective and my involvement, it wasn't an emotional sort of brotherhood kind of thing that some people might think existed. That wasn't my reality with them."

In April 2014, Tate and QUEENSRŸCHE announced that a settlement had been reached after a nearly two-year legal battle where Tate sued over the rights to the QUEENSRŸCHE name after being fired in 2012. Original QUEENSRŸCHE members Michael Wilton (guitar),Scott Rockenfield (drums) and Eddie Jackson (bass) responded with a countersuit. The settlement included an agreement that Wilton, Rockenfield and Jackson would continue as QUEENSRŸCHE, while Tate would have the sole right to perform the albums "Operation: Mindcrime" and "Operation: Mindcrime II" in their entirety live.

In a recent interview with Metal-Heads.de, Wilton was asked whether the period between 2012 and 2014 when QUEENSRŸCHE was embroiled in a legal battle with Tate was the "hardest path" he has had to take as a musician so far. He responded: "I think it's any person's hardest path. It's not easy when the business is failing and bad decisions are being made, and you have to, basically, rebuild what you have left. And to do that… It's been a few years, and we're still doing that — we're still repairing all the damage, basically… speaking, you know, in a business way. But in a creative way, we have the band back again. We have the chemistry, the band's on fire live, and we're writing great music again, so that's all happening. It's, like, a band has its ups and downs, and when it's in its down, it's the hardest to get back up. And that's a hard task for any band."

QUEENSRŸCHE's latest album, "Condition Hüman", debuted at No. 27 on The Billboard 200 chart, having shifted 14,000 equivalent album units in the week ending October 8, 2015.

The band, which now features former CRIMSON GLORY singer Todd La Torre as its frontman, will enter the studio in January 2017 to begin work on the follow-up effort, to be released via Century Media.

Frontiers Music Srl released "Resurrection", the new album from OPERATION: MINDCRIME, on September 23.