Queens of the Stone Age

In honour of my going to see Queens of the Stone Age perform Sunday night (technically tonight) I decided to make today's review one of their albums. I thought it might be appropriate to start at the beginning.

Queens of the Stone Age - Queens of the Stone Age
Many have now heard of QotSA, due to the massive success of their third album, Songs for the Deaf, but they have been recording music for a long time before that. Not just as Queens of the Stone Age, but in the case of band leader Josh Homme and former bass player Nic Oliveri, for about 8 years longer in the broken up desert rock band Kyuss. For those not familiar with Kyuss, they were among the early pioneers of the style known today as desert rock, or stoner rock, or any of a myriad of other titles. Essentially they wrote downtuned, semi-experimental hard rock songs with a great groove to it. As they had only recently broken up when this record was recorded (primarily by Homme, excepting drums) the album naturally contains many similarities to the work of later Kyuss, but there are still some fairly noticeable differences.
The style that Homme was going for at this point, according to interviews conducted at the time, was what he dubbed "robot rock" namely, getting a good groove going and then just hammering away at it. I personally don't really agree with that assesment of the music, as there is a great deal of movement within the songs themselves, but I will definitely agree that it is a very groove oriented album. This starts immediately, with album opener "Regular John" which is one of the most catchy songs on the album, featuring some really killer riffing.
Lyrics on this album are a little less important, while featuring some of the later Queens trademarks like surreal and/or sex infused lyrics, in many ways (to me at least) the vocals are more there to complement and balance out the instrumentation. What Homme is singing isn't as important as the singing itself, basically. Which really leads into the most important and yet basic fact about this album: it wants you to have a good time. It's a fairly simple, groove and riff filled hard rock album, but it was recorded by one of the best at this style out there. Homme is clearly experimenting with things which he couldn't do in the more collective atmosphere of Kyuss, and as he would prove with the later album Lullabies to Paralyze, he is often at his best when he's allowed to go all out with his own vision. This is one of my favourite hard rock records, and is always great to just put on when you're looking for some great simple music. While the band would get much more experimental later on, this showcases the best of one branch of hard rock.
8/10