Queensryche’s Todd La Torre Calls Geoff Tate’s Queensryche Album Cover ‘A Cheap Shot’

When you take your former bandmates to court, start a new band with the same name, and release a record with a big 'F.U.' on the cover, you're pretty much picking a fight -- so Geoff Tate can't be surprised that his Queensryche replacement, Todd La Torre, isn't mincing words about where things stand between them.

Speaking with KNAC.com (via Classic Rock Magazine) about the Tate-fronted Queensryche's new album, 'Frequency Unknown,' La Torre insisted, "I don’t even acknowledge it as a Queensryche album. The guys that play on the record are not the guys that you see onstage, and aren’t the guys that wrote the songs. It’s a revolving door, dude, it’s not Queensryche. What I’m in is Queensryche."

But what really troubles La Torre is the title and artwork Tate chose. "When I first heard ‘Frequency Unknown‘ I thought, ‘That’s kinda cool,’" he recalled. "And then I saw the fist with the ‘FU’ and I was like, ‘Really?’ ... A monkey can decipher what that is. It’s below the belt. To me, it’s not what Queensryche was about. Queensryche wasn’t about the cheap shots -- it was always more respectful and intelligent than that."

More than taking it as a personal insult, however, La Torre feels like Tate's damaging the integrity the band's built up over the course of its career(s). "That’s not good for the brand," he argued. "That’s not good for Queensryche to have the tri-ryche in front of an ‘FU’. It’s immature, it’s angry -- it’s stupid."