Geoff Tate’s Operation: Mindcrime

The ex-Queensrÿche singer returns with his current band.

You’re also part of the touring line-up of the all-star metal opera project Avantasia. With each show running for more than three hours, it’s overblown and really shouldn’t work, but it does. I sing two songs, and there’s an hour before I go back on, so it’s hard to stay sober [laughs]. But Avantasia is a wonderful situation for me. I really enjoy their music and I’ve become good friends with all the band.

Avantasia leader Tobias Sammet is quite a character. He is. He’s like a guy out of a different time. Tobi really connects with people. I have so much respect for him as a performer.

Performed a cast of Italians led by Simone Mularoni of the prog-metal band DGM, your latest undertaking, Sweet Oblivion, is a project instigated by Frontiers Records. Simone and I had never met, and we still haven’t. My contribution was recorded on tour buses and in hotel rooms.

Mularoni wanted to recreate the mood of the vintage Queensrÿche records. How successful do you think he was? I think very. That’s what drew my ear to the project – the playing of this very familiarsounding music.

Will any Sweet Oblivion material feature in these UK shows? No, though I should think about that for future dates. These shows focus on the songs from my many different albums.

Recent interviews suggest you are relishing the spontaneity and creative freedom of your current situation. That’s a good way of describing it, yeah. I like working with different people. After so many years it’s been a long time coming.

After almost a decade since breaking up with Queensrÿche, can you now listen to what they’ve done since then? Not really, though I did hear them play live in Barcelona a few years ago. Young Todd [La Torre] sounds so much like me.

Any regrets about the way it ended? Could things have been handled differently? Oh yeah, in a perfect world. But we’re not robots, are we? Operation: Mindcrime’s dates run throughout late August.