Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf


Speaking of interesting concepts, here's Songs For The Deaf, it's the one with Dave Grohl sitting in as drummer (they met when Homme was still in Kyuss). Lots of people do the changing radio stations thing (Rob Zombie, for example), but Josh Homme brought in celebrity guest DJs to narrate this conceptual drive from LA to Joshua Tree.

This is kind of the biggest and lastest first stage Queens of the Stone Age album (Homme calls them a trilogy of not being Kyuss, doing more of that, and finally getting it right). It's heavy and creepy. Not so much evil, but creepy. Desert stoner rock/metal. A lot of the songs came from Desert Sessions (that's the side project where Homme just invites friends out to his studio to just create music for music's sake).

The radio concept is nice because it means different things for everybody. For Homme it's the way all the disparate styles they were going for fit together fluidly, for Oliveri it's making fun of how radio stations all play the same stuff (which definitely isn't Queens of the Stone Age). 

Whether you like them or not, the whole point of the band is to be completely unconcerned about writing hit songs and instead writing what they wish they could listen to but doesn't exist yet. My copy of their latest album Villains got eaten by the make funny grinding sounds receptacle in my car. I really should disassemble that thing some time. 

If you didn't know, we're listening to a few of my actual favorite albums. Obviously i love all albums like they are my children or dogs, but this particular batch doesn't have off days, they are amazing no matter what frame of mind you're in. I've got a few more before i start veering off into the woods again, so enjoy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

Eyrth - Meridian

Image
A terrible sadness accompanies the release of Meridian by Latvian Ambient Metal band EYRTH. Since their debut Fracture in early 2019 the band, and indeed the whole world has suffered a global pandemic, intense ideo-political turmoil, the death of friend and bandmate Igor Golovin, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  The war in Ukraine still wages on, even though we in the Western hemisphere seem to have largely forgotten. These are turbulent times, and Alex and Andrey are rightfully entering an extended break. We may not see or hear new music from them for a while, if ever, and that is completely understandable. The music they've created, however, is truly breathtaking. Self-described as "Uranium wreckage in audio," the music of Eyrth is every bit as hauntingly beautiful as it is brutally crushing. Close your eyes and you'll quickly find yourself in the achingly cold and desolate wasteland of human technological atrophy. Slow, ponderously heavy, at times rabidly ragi
Read more

My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Hit & Run Holiday

Image
I noticed today that the strange part of the world who actually knows about My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult has finally accepted that they are in fact "industrial disco." The history of Wax Trax and Chicago industrial music is a subject worthy of an entire library, but MLWTTK is my favorite band to emerge from those humble record store beginnings. They are an unpredictable band for sure, and i definitely don't like all of their albums, but Hit & Run Holiday is an album i think every human being on the planet should hear at least once. This album is simply impossible to describe, because it doesn't actually belong to a musical genre as we understand them. It's actually a movie. I know that sounds weird, but the band is actually a movie. My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult was the name of the movie they were trying to make, but composing the soundtrack led them so far afield that they just shrugged and kept going as a band instead. All of their albums come f
Read more