Depending on how you look at it, this is either wonderful news, or horribly wrong in so many ways: according to Billboard, Queensryche will release Operation: mindcrime II next year. And they’ll lead up to it with a tour starting in October, where they’ll play all of the original, and some material from the new one.

Now, I’ll grant that there have been some excellent, excellent sequels made over the course of history, a few of which didn’t even involve Hobbits. But there have also been some - Highlander 2 comes to mind, as does Star Wars: Episode 1, though of course that was really a prequel - that took a perfectly good story and butchered it. “We’re not really immortals from Scotland, we’re from another planet!” was a bit of a leap, as was “The force is caused by little teeny things in your blood.” Um… sure. Whatever you say, guys.

So there’s always the concern that someone will screw up the story line. Hopefully the guys won’t do that. Then… there are the other little pesky points:

1. Missing a member, are we? (No, no, not a tockley!)

2. During the Building Empires tour, the band made it very clear that Mindcrime had never been, and would never again be performed in its entirety.

3. A keyboardist? And one that was formerly the official composer to the Vatican? Nobody let him read the libretto, did they? Especially the bits about religion and sex, and a priest getting killed, and…

“The mind boggles” is… an understatement. Actually, saying it’s an understatement is an understatement. I really hope this turns out to be every bit as incredible as the first one, but I’m ready to see cats and dogs living together, pigs flying, and an asteroid heading right smack for us.