Empire is the fourth full-length studio album by the American heavy metal band Queensrÿche, released on August 20, 1990.

The review stated that the band went for "a song-oriented approach that is more art rock and less metal" with lyrics that talk about social and physical handicaps in "Best I Can" and issues such as poverty and regret in "Della Brown" and romance with "Another Rainy Night (Without You)" and "Hand On Heart".

The reviewer called the album a "very pleasant, but only intermittently gripping" listen, identifying the songs "Best I Can", "Silent Lucidity", and "Jet City Woman" as some of the band's best material.

Begrand called the album an "enigma" that's "beautifully produced and features some of the band's quintessential songs, but at the same time it's a rather bloated, conceptually scattershot piece of work containing filler that honestly has not aged very well".

He criticized both the album's progressive metal riffs, calling them "tuneless bombast", and the dire nature of the lyrics.