It was released during a time when there were two different versions of the band, the other led by former singer Geoff Tate, who would give up his rights to the name in an amicable settlement in 2014.

[10][11] While the other founding members - Rockenfield, Wilton and bassist Eddie Jackson - had hoped to reconcile with Tate, they instead decided to fire him.

[13] Tate started his own version of the band, and released the album Frequency Unknown under the Queensrÿche moniker through Deadline Music on April 23, 2013.

[4] At the time Tate was fired, Jackson, Rockenfield, Wilton and guitarist Parker Lundgren had been working with another vocalist, Todd La Torre, under the name "Rising West".

"[16] This side project was received with much enthusiasm: both shows they had scheduled to play at Seattle's Hard Rock Cafe in June 2012 sold out in less than 48 hours,[17] and people started calling them "the new Queensrÿche".

"[34] After that, Wilton added some guitar parts, including a small bridge,[33] and Rockenfield contributed the orchestration, additional arrangements, and the intro track, "X2".

[26] He came up with the music and melody for it in one day, starting with a riff inspired by the song "Empire", in A440 drop D."[31] La Torre wrote the lyrics and created a guide bass line.

[17] After finishing the framework, consisting of drums and guitars, he sent the demo to La Torre, who would write lyrics and melodies to the song.

[17] Wanting to return to their sound from that particular era, after narrowing down the selection from twelve finished songs to ten that they wanted to record,[23] the band sought to work with James "Jimbo" Barton,[17] who had mixed and engineered the band's hit albums Operation: Mindcrime and Empire, and whom they had last worked with in the mid-90s, when he produced their album Promised Land.

[26] Queensrÿche invited him to see them perform at the House of Blues in West Hollywood on November 24, 2012,[18] where he reportedly said that the band "had something really special here and he wanted to be a part of it.

[18] Rockenfield looks back on the collaboration, saying: "Working with Jimbo [Barton] and the addition of Todd has revitalized the band in ways we never knew until we heard the final results"[5] and: "We had the best time, and he was such a great, perfect match to make this record."

Queensrÿche is the first album by the band to feature a vocalist other than Tate, sparking concerns with some fans that the sound will be too drastically different from what they were used to.

"[40] La Torre especially sought to provide a "common thread" in the vocals, that he felt was missing from the previous few records released by Queensrÿche.

"[18] Its length would later become a point of criticism, but Wilton has explained that the band prefers to choose quality over quantity: "we don't want to have an album with filler songs.

[41] La Torre stated that listeners would hear "a difference in sound, style, and writing in the new Queensrÿche record as compared to the last several albums.

[59] Following the event, Andrew Bansal described the album as having songs that "sounded fresh and modern with a touch of the classic Queensrÿche style.

[43] In November 2013, the band released the mini movie Ad Lucem, directed by Daniel Andres Gomez Bagby, and featuring the songs "Spore", "Midnight Lullaby", "A World Without", and "X2".

Its story focuses on the trials of a young cop named Charlie, played by Geoffrey Kennedy, who at the beginning receives a phone call summoning him for what is presumably his first job.

Later, the chief of police, played by R.J. Adams, is seen looking through a window as the second thug is telling a detective to just ask Charlie about what Brian did during the bust.

Charlie denies this at first but when the chief threatens to take punitive action against him as well and picks up the phone, he tells them where his brother hid the money, forcing Brian to surrender his badge and gun.

Enraged at his brother for rolling on him, Brian physically assaults Charlie later in the police station's parking garage and then makes a quick getaway in a pickup truck driven by La Torre.

However, the film then rolls into the song “Midnight Lullaby” as Cathy is seen screaming and crying in agony as she dies during childbirth, leaving Charlie to raise their child alone.

The film then rolls into the song “A World Without” as a grief-stricken Charlie and several other mourners, some of whom are clearly played by Queensrÿche's band members, attend Cathy's funeral.

Brian is also shown to be laughing and pointing but his appearance as well as the other mourners’ cruelty is revealed to be happening merely inside Charlie's head, coinciding with the lyric "what is real and what is fantasy".

"[57] Trey Spencer of Sputnikmusic sums up the impression he got from the album as: "Queensryche is the sound of Empire with hints of the band's earliest material, but built for the modern metal fan.

"[75] He finds that there are too few progressive elements: "The songs all seem to be lacking that layer of subtle flourishes and clean guitar melodies that were (apparently) DeGarmo's influence.

"[75] Christa Titus of Billboard finds that "the traditional Queensrÿche sound is back", and asserts that "this determined album shows the band will survive again [without Tate]".

"[70] Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles compared the song "Redemption" to "Cold" the first single from Frequency Unknown, the album by Geoff Tate's version of the band.

(...) Call it Rage For Order meets Empire; an obnoxious claim to be sure, feel free to disagree, but it's pretty damn hard to refute.

"[72] John Knowles from Metal Exiles and Kenneth Morton from Highwire Daze were at the press presentation on May 1, 2013, in The Viper Room.