Less than eight months after the release of Queen II, Queen came back hard at the end of 1974 with Sheer Heart Attack. Thanks to an infection that almost cost guitarist Brian May an arm, it was impossible to perform and the band found themselves back in the studio. May did not let himself be stopped, judging by his minute guitar solo in opener Brighton Rock. On Sheer Heart Attack we hear a Queen
… with much more focus than on their previous albums, despite their characteristic eclectic mix of styles. Moreover, the record has a much smaller and cleaner sound than before. Small and bare by Queen standards of course, because songs like Bring Back That Leroy Brown and In The Lap Of The Gods are still full of choirs. Using the resources offered by the studio a little more sparingly also resulted in a breakthrough for the general public. The single Killer Queen reached the second spot on the UK charts and was the tipping point for the band. Bassist John Deacon would later say that he never really believed in the group until Killer Queen. To promote Sheer Heart Attack, Queen successfully toured America and Japan for the first time and thus took a step towards world domination. (JE)more
