Second and Third Choice Vocalists for Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Queensrÿche Team Up to Take on the World

Geoff Tate’s Operation: Mindcrime Featuring Geoff Tate Featuring Tim “Ripper” Owens and Blaze Bayley* have released a new song, “Taking on the World.” It’s bad.

Geoff Tate’s Operation: Mindcrime Featuring Geoff Tate Featuring Tim “Ripper” Owens and Blaze Bayley have released a new music video for their new song, “Taking on the World.” It. Is. HILARIOUS. I mean, it’s just chockfull of cheap shittiness. I could write volumes about said cheap shittiness, but just by way of example: there’s a moment at the 3:38 mark when these two security dudes approach our three heroes and try to grab them, only to find that they’ve disappeared like ghosts, at which point the guards are all like, “WHOA! Where did they go?!?!”. Which is all well good, except the way they achieved the effect was to transition between a shot of the approaching guards and the disappearing singers via a fade. In other words: the guards appear out of thin air just as the vocalists disappear into thin air. They never actually share the screen. So the whole idea that the guards would be shocked by the singers’ magical teleporting ability makes no sense, because the guards apparently have that same ability.

But the video is even funnier if you watch it multiple times, because there’s stuff which you might not find that humorous the first time around, but will absolutely tickle you the second.

For example, early on in the clip, we see Tate on the phone with Owens and Bayley. Tate looks like he’s enjoying the friendly chat:

They are apparently discussing a flash drive in the shape of the Operation: Mindcrime logo:

Okay, that all seems reasonable enough, right? Except that later, you find out that their mission was to kidnap and torture a man:

So, in retrospect, Tate’s smile when he’s on the phone at the beginning of the video is SOCIOPATHIC AS FUCK. Maybe that was the intention, but I doubt it. This isn’t a Cannibal Corpse song about the joys of flaying a man alive, it’s a Geoff Tate song about taking on the… y’know. The inspirational message of the song doesn’t really match the content of the clip.

Also, when they finally get the flash drive, they expect us not to notice that it doesn’t look anything like the photo in which it was originally presented. I assume this is because the photo was made with Photoshop and therefore cost nothing to manufacture, but it when it came to the real thing, it was cheaper to slap some Playdough on a regular looking flash drive than pay someone to make a special shell. As a result, it looks like something some poor schmuck is forced to keep on his desk and pretend to be proud of because his kid made it in her second grade art class.

So do yourself a favor and watch the video — twice — below. The song will appear on blah blah blah you don’t care because the song sucks and you have no intention of purchasing the album.

*Even Paul Di’Anno wanted nothing to do with this shit.