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Album Review
by SashaS
28-8-2002
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More on: Queens Of The Stone Age
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| QotSA's 'Songs For The Deaf' |
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Queens Of The Stone Age: 'Songs For The Deaf'
(Interscope)
Queens Of The Stone Age’s feelgood at the summer’s end
Queens Of The Stone Age’s third album, ‘Songs For The Deaf’, is a gem one expects it to be: riffy and full of feelgood tunes, a tad humorous and all-together rocking. This disc might not be so insta-friendly as ‘Rated R’ was, but it contains tunes to keep one energised and in fun-mood during the rainy periods.
QotSA are more of a project and less of a band. It has two permanent members, guitarist/singer Josh Homme and bassist/vocalist/nudist (onstage) Nick Oliveri, while other faces rotate. Former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan is semi-permanent member (who sings a couple of songs on albums and live) but the major guest this time is Foo Fighters’ singer/guitarist Dave Grohl, on drums. He’s generally given up drumming since Nirvana went belly up but he’s not forgotten how to bash the skins.
Grohl is the powerhouse of cohesion here, keeping rhythms with colossal precision, driving the band into complex paces they’ve hardly dared approach before. It is a sonic attack, a sensual overload, a virtual rocking in real time and place. From the opening chords of ‘You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Million Bucks’, this is connoisseurs’ music. Usually designated as ‘stoner-rock’, this actually is a good honest hard rock, with brains and urge to explore beyond the narrow confines of whatever is accepted at any given moment.
From the straight-forward rocking of ‘First It Giveth’, we turn into a prog-cum-jazzy realm of ‘A Song For The Dead’, descend into a psychedelic den with ‘The Sky Is Fallin’’, only to be lifted beyond the Van Allen belt with the bluesy ‘Another Love Song’. The chrono-minimal song ‘Six Shooters’ is balanced with the ambitious title track, a killer!
On the outside ‘Songs For The Deaf’ sounds like a concept album – due to mock radio IDs and DJ chat – but it is not, songs’ themes are hardly connected. Interesting ‘personnel’ are ‘announcers’: one is Twiggy Ramirez, former member of Marilyn Manson, the other is Casey Chaos, the Amen frontman. It all adds to the collective spirit of this undertaking.
A brilliant album, perhaps a tad less so than ‘Rated R’, but still a challenge to all the linear-metallers as QotSA are one of the rare sonic travellers who trip the cosmic dust… And, their sudden pauses wreck havoc with moshing!
Euro-version of the album comes complete with a hidden-track, ‘Mosquito Song’, bonus tracks, ‘The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret’ (live version) and ‘Everybody’s Gonna Be Happy’, plus a 5-track DVD of live material (three cuts with Grohl). Shouldn’t you be ordering it already?
8.6/10
SashaS
28-8-2002
Queens Of The Stone Age’s album ‘Songs For The Deaf’ is released 26 August 2002 on Interscope
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