Tie Your Mix Down is the epitome of
Queen as you've never heard the band, as the opening
Die Krupps remix of "Tie Your Mother Down" so admirably demonstrates -- it's
Motörhead's
Lemmy covering the vocals with
Ted Nugent's guitar on cat yowls in the background. And really, after that, what's left? Quite a bit, surprisingly, as the album continues pairing people you might never have imagined in one room together --
Megadeth with
Dream Theater ("Sheer Heart Attack") and
Rough Cut with
the Doors ("We Are the Champions"). And that's only the beginning, as
Tie Your Mix Down shoves
Queen's finest moments through a grinder, mixes in some industrial-strength trickery, and extrudes something completely different. But that's not to say that the songs don't remain the same, sometimes. Even the
KMFDM remix of "We Will Rock You" is tame, sailing past the electronic gizzard of the
Sigue Sigue Sputnik reinvention of "Keep Yourself Alive." That song, incidentally, features
Dokken's
Mark Boals and
Reb Beach. And on it goes, across "Get Down Make Love," "I Want It All," and "Another One Bites the Dust" before slamming the door with a classic
Spahn Ranch treatment of "One Vision, lovingly remixed by
Matt Green, and a hyper-psychedelic, if fairly wobbly, version of "Killer Queen." Certainly of its kind, and absolutely not for the faint of heart (or
Queen traditionalists!),
Tie Your Mix Down is nevertheless a startling reinvention of songs that were once an integral part of the '70s musical psyche, but have now been reborn for the clatter and bash crew. ~ Amy Hanson