Rogers drumming in the 80's was certainly not as special as some of his 70's stuff, in fact he became pretty basic and boring. However, i was listening to ADATR and overall the drumming on that album is fairly basic too. Not because of Roger, but the songs themselves just do not require much in terms of drumming. Two songs have no or little drumming on them (YTMBA and Millionaire).
So which album do you think had the least impressive drumming from the 70's. IMO the best would have to be Jazz despite its poor drum sound.
I'm just comparing sound, because Roger just plays great on every album. But Trident boys did a number on Roger's kit as equivalent to a gun silencer, with cardboard and tape all over the kit on Queen 1. Queen 2 was a little better but not great. Compare that to Live at the rainbow 74' which the best sound I ever heard on his kit from the early days. (snare, toms, sound awesome).
News of The World has my vote for overall drum sound and playing. Great, open sound from the drums themselves, very meaty without relying on reverb etc to fill out the sound.
The drums on Queen I are horrible sound-wise. Queen II and NOTW are my favorite productions. As far as performance? I think he's done a great job for all his recordings. NOTW he seemed a little more reserved in his playing. Nothing over the top.
Yeah, Queen 1 definitely. It's really a shame they didn't try and flesh the dums right out with the remasters, but then maybe some purists wouldn't have liked that. I always said the whole recording of Queen 1 seems very muddy and it would of been great to have some life injected into those songs.
The more basic style adopted during the 80's was a result of Mac's stripped down production style..
It maybe less obvious now, but at the time the basic sounds on The Game were quite a shock compared to what came before.
Roger as a drummer didn't really change, just listen to his playing on live recordings from the 80's.
The Game had good drum sounds within the context of the songs. Maybe a lot better than most of the Roy Thomas Baker produced albums.
Overall NOTW has a very earthy live drum sound and some great playing. The playing on ADATR is really good, you can't pick on a piano ballad as an example of a lack of good playing.
Queen.
Followed by Jazz.
But only because of the sound, not the actual playing.
Jazz, especially had some decent drumming on it.
Of all the Queen albums, The Game had the best sounding drums (except not on another one bites the dust). I love how they sound on Dragon attack.
As far as the sound of the drums is concerned then Jazz is by far the worst, they sound very thin and more at home on a reggae record.
As far as playing is concerned then there is no answer because each track has drums that suit it perfectly.