Before the ritual unboxing, we recommend a trip to YouTube to get in the mood: Queen’s first performance on “Top Of The Pops” on February 21, 1974 marked a breakthrough of historic proportions. “Fear me you loathsome, lazy creatures / I descend upon your Earth from the skies…” declaims Freddie Mercury like a conqueror in “Seven Seas Of Rhye”. It was a coincidence that the band was there at all – labelmate David Bowie was scheduled to perform “Rebel Rebel”. Because that was prevented, the EMI promotion boss sent the newcomer Queen into the race. They had been supporting Mott The Hoople until the end of 1973 and were therefore in prime practice for such a high-profile appearance. Back in January, Mercury said goodbye after the concert at Australia’s Sunbury Pop Festival with the prophetic words: “When we come back to Australia, Queen will be the biggest band in the world!”
Queen were gripped by the will to fight on the BBC, which was transmitted to the TV audience of ten million – shortly afterwards the song about a fantasy world that Mercury had dreamed up as a child with his sister Kashmira was the first of the group’s 24 singles to make it into the British top ten. In the outro of the song you can hear the music hall traditional “I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside”, which returns in “Brighton Rock” on the successor SHEER HEART ATTACK – don’t anyone accuse this band’s work of lacking coherence! “Seven Seas” had already been chosen as a fragment for the debut, which was re-released in 2024 as QUEEN I in the controversial “Rebuild” with AI-edited vocals. The fan criticism seems to have been received: This time the remix team made up of Justin Shirley Smith, Joshua J. Macrae and Kris Fredriksson focused on exposing instead of reshaping.
Three discs provide coherent context, but leave die-hard fans shrugging their shoulders
The best voice in rock history remains largely in the original sound. On the first, the so-called “white side” of the LP, composed predominantly by Brian May, “Father To Son” gains in transparency without losing power; the “White Queen (As It Began)” floats to even loftier heights. The “black side” around the “March Of The Black Queen” for which Mercury was responsible was also refined: “Ogre Battle” and “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke” benefit from the clearer staggering, choirs and overdubs mesh more precisely.
Mick Rock’s chiaroscuro cover photo also has a new effect. The cross-shaped group picture – inspired by a Marlene Dietrich motif from “Shanghai Express” (1932) – now, broken down into individual portraits, adorns four of the five CDs, which complement the two vinyl discs with the 2026 mix. However, this clearly puts the internal weights into perspective: drummer Roger Taylor only contributed “The Loser In The End”, bassist John Deacon only made his debut as a songwriter the following year with “Misfire”.
Three discs provide coherent context, but make die-hard fans shrug their shoulders: CD3 only collects instrumentals; the BBC tracks from CD4 previously appeared on ON AIR (2016); CD5 compiles live recordings from LIVE AT THE RAINBOW ’74 (2014) and A NIGHT AT THE ODEON – HAMMERSMITH 1975 (2015). An editorial question mark remains with the alleged “Rainbow” version of “The March Of The Black Queen” from “March 1974”, which was not played at all on March 31, 1974; it is the version from November 20, ’74.
QUEEN II remains the band’s most coherent and at the same time heaviest album
One of two small mistakes, because the legendary liner notes “… and nobody played the synthesizer … again” is not entirely true: In the outro of “Seven Seas”, producer Roy Thomas Baker accompanies the singalong with a barely audible Dubreq Stylophone – strictly speaking, a synthesizer. Of greatest appeal is CD2, “Sessions”: 15 unreleased demos plus the out-produced Christmas song “Not For Sale (Polar Bear),” once in the repertoire of Queen’s previous band Smile. False starts, abrupt endings, guide vocals, May instead of Mercury on the mic (“As It Began” – from ’69!), Mercury instead of May on the mic (“Some Day One Day”), “The Loser In The End” as a funk excursion into the HOT SPACE future, nonsense and the usual taunts ground even super complex pieces like “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke”, inspired by the father-assassin painter Richard Dadd.
QUEEN II remains the band’s most coherent and at the same time heaviest album, only “Funny How Love Is” is out of line. The record made Queen compatible with fans of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple and paved the way for “BoRhap” with its complex, unpredictable compositions.
It’s not for nothing that his groundbreaking video took up Mick Rock’s cover aesthetic – and brought it to eternal life.
