Made In Heaven

Faintly superfluous, given the magnificent finality of its precedessor, Innuendo, which managed, against all odds, to cap the Queen story with their most accomplished album since 1977's News Of The World. But after the death of Freddie Mercury in November 1991, the band were reportedly left with a number of unreleased demos--among then, a number of Mercury vocal tracks--and resolved to complete them, and make the results available to fans. Was it a case of a band seeking to cash-in one last time? Or trying, instead, to work through their grief, the only way they knew how? Opinions were mixed--but the result ("Dedicated to the immortal spirit of Freddie Mercury") was undeniably an anti-climax. Comprising tracks both old ("I Was Born To Love You," dusted-off from Mercury's 1985 solo album; the rather tactless "Too Much Love Will Kill You" from May's Back To The Light) and new, the sense of barrel-scraping was inescapable. One for completists only. --Andrew McGuire