Queens of the Stone Age Discography Dive

In appreciation of one of my all-time favorite bands, Queens of the Stone Age, and in celebration of their first album in six years dropping last Friday, let's dive into the band's two-decade long discography and highlight some of their best work.

Queens of the Stone Age (1998)

QOTSA's first album, their self-titled, is RAW. The recordings are scuzzy, the riffs are heavy, and Josh Homme's playfully dark attitude arrives fully-formed. Are the lyrics good? Probably not. Do they need to be? Not at all. The heavy playing and soaring vocals more than make up for it. Besides, although I love Josh Homme's singing, he doesn't necessarily enunciate well enough for you to catch the bad lines. On their self-titled, Queens is all about the feeling, and I'm all for it, even if the album doesn't fully justify its hour-long runtime. If you want heavy, fuzzed-out guitars, and a rock frontman with a knack for beautiful melodies, this is the album for you.

Some highlights include:

The first two tracks, Regular John and Avon, both contrasting classic rock vocals with Dopesmoker-esque chugging riffs to great effect.

The Bronze, a propulsive cut with manic energy and some great vocal lines.

How to Handle a Rope, with the album's best guitar line.

I Was a Teenage Hand Model, the first of many off-kilter and long QOTSA album closers. Not the best one (that goes to mosquito song off Songs for the Deaf), but they're always a delight.

Rated R (2000)

This album is no sophomore slump. Rated R refines the band's playing without losing its edge, expanding its versatility and taking big, successful swings. Let's start with the bonkers intro Feel Good Hit Of The Summer. With infectious energy, an absurdly quick instrumental, and a chorus of "Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, Marijuana, Ecstasy, and Alcohol," this is QOTSA at their most fun. Its a great tone setter and a hint of QOTSA's sense of humor, something lacking in their self-titled.

On Rated R, Josh Homme taps into his extremes, both his sweet, melodic side and metal-adjacent screams. His soft melodies contrast nicely with the band's chaotic backdrops, yielding dividends on mysterious, alluring tracks like The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret and Auto Pilot. The screams, well they speak for themselves. Listen to Tension Head and tell me you don't feel second-hand catharsis. The secret weapon of Rated R is its boundless variety, a major improvement over the bludgeoning fundamentals of their debut. From the fist-to-the-face that is Quick and To The Pointless to a warm, earthy respite in Lightning Song, QOTSA meets the assignment.

Homme's clearer vocals come with the risk of accentuating cringeworthy lyrics, but there really aren't that many. Queens have never been the band to go to for thoughtful lyricisim, but their brand of drugged-out machismo is exceptionally tolerable here. Rated R also benefits from a shorter length than the debut, cutting the fat and keeping things fresh.

Some highlights include:

Feel Good Hit Of The Summer, which lives up to its title.

The Lost Art of Keeping A Secret, an entrancing, seductive song with some grade-A crooning

Better Living Through Chemistry, a trip to Bongolia.

Lightning Song, the first of many QOTSA songs with "song" in the name, they're always special.

Songs for the Deaf (2002)

If you're a QOTSA fan, odds are this is the album you came here to see, and yeah, it's all it's cracked up to be. I don't have much to say that hasn't been said, but god damn this is one of the best rock records I've ever heard. I've spun it so many times I don't know where to start, but here we go. Songs for the Deaf retains Rated R's versatility, but lights every track ablaze with fiery vitality, earning its hell-red album cover. Add to that an entertaining concept (a roadtrip from LA to Joshua Tree where you hear different radio stations along the way), and you have a ready-made masterpiece. The skits let QOTSA to show off their creativity, starting with funny parodies like KLONE Radio and ending up with cultish messages claiming God is in the Radio. It's just great.

Zooming back in, this album contains some of the band's catchiest, most memorable tracks. No One Knows is quintessential Queens, arguably their flagship track, and in my opinion the best song with which to introduce the band to others. It's AUX certified. You Think I Ain't Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire, or just Millionaire, for sane people, is a perfect opener. It explodes into hellfire riffs when you least expect it, and once it gets going it never slows the pace. Magically, the eclectic deep cuts are just as good, opening new avenues for the band. A foray into surf-rock goes swimmingly on Another Love Song, and Mosquito Song, a heartfelt acoustic anthem that builds to an epic peak, may just be the band's greatest song. It's definitely their best closer. No track highlights this time, this whole album is the highlight. If QOTSA interests you whatsoever, start here.

Lullabies to Paralyze (2005)

Three years after Songs For The Deaf, Queens returned with Lullabies to Paralyze, an album that, based on its dark cover and haunting intro, should've been a pivot toward a stripped-back, emotive sound. You think that, and then Medication, the first real song on the album starts, aaaaand it's just a standard QOTSA song. A good one, sure, with energy to spare, but nothing particularly special. Then the rest of the album happens, and it's more of the same.

There are good tracks, like Little Sister, with one of the band's catchiest choruses, and Everybody Knows that You're Insane, which sounds like a great MCR song. However, these could have fit on any Queens album, and they slowly sand away at whatever unique identity Lullabies was aiming for. If QOTSA went fully melodic, showed off some better lyricisim, and let the instrumentals match that energy, it would have been a fresh direction! They didn't fully commit, and it shows in thin tracks that blend together, comprising an album lacking clear direction.

Three songs on this album capture the direction the project as a whole should have taken: the atmospheric intro This Lullaby, the ballad I Never Came, and the wistful closer Long Slow Goodbye. Lullabies is a step backward for Queens, so afraid to pursue a new direction that it ends up standing in place. Also the album cover sucks.

Some highlights include:

This Lullaby, which could fit on the Over the Garden Wall soundtrack, that's how you know its good.

Little Sister, one of QOTSA's most fully formed and snappy tracks.

I Never Came, an allruing, ethereal vibe.

Era Vulgaris (2007)

Era Vulgaris feels like a direct response to how little new ground Lullabies broke for the band. It's innovative, strange, and unkempt, moving leaps and bounds forward. The lightbulbs on the cover must've been above the band's collective head the whole time, because Era Vulgaris is bursting with ideas. Not all of them work, but the batting average is high, and the palpable creative energy radiating from every corner of this album is a delight to feel.

QOTSA tinkered with their formula, and it produced acidic, rusty riffs, sudden tempo changes and a larger focus on soundplay. Beyond all this, the standout aspect of this album is the TEXTURES. After I got into Queens, I gave this album a cursory listen. When I returned to it months later, specific sections of every song I'd heard had still stuck in my head from the first listen. Songs like Sick, Sick, Sick rank among the band's best, with a rubbery guitar line, multiple phases, and a fun vibe. I originally thought Josh Homme was doing his best Julian Casablancas impression near the end of the track, but it's actually just Julian Casablancas, which was a welcome surprise.

The UK-exclusive title-track (linked here) is excellent, with crunchy guitar, an appearance from Trent Reznor, and a freakish breakdown. Appreciation also has to be given to the colorfully amusing album art that spawned cultural icons Bulby and Stumpy the Pirate. Era Vulgaris is singular and sour, yet sometimes, like on the low-key Make It Wit Chu, surprisingly sweet. Versatile and light, it marks an evolution for QOTSA, and if you can tolerate experimental, harsh sounds, this may just be the Queens album for you.

Some highlights include:

Turning On The Screw, and Sick, Sick, Sick, double-trouble openers that throw everything at the wall before shattering it entirely.

Suture Up Your Future, a catchy, endearing deep cut.

River In The Road, a song both spirited and nomadic, marching along with stunning falsetto and krautrock guitars.

Out of the whole discography, this album grew on me the most during relistens, if you give it a chance its eccentricities give way to fun and surprising depth.

...Like Clockwork (2013)

This is the album that got me into QOTSA, and boy was it a good place to start. ...Like Clockwork is the band's most consistent, tasteful, and mature album, with standout lyricism, aesthetic consistency, and deft sequencing. It is carefully crafted, well-balanced, and so goddamn hard-hitting. After the experimentation of Era Vulgaris, Queens took their longest break between albums, 6 years, to regroup and refine.

The results are clear in tracks like I Sat by the Ocean, one of their most complete, exhilirating tracks, one that has become a bit of a calling card much like No One Knows a decade prior. I find it hard not to talk about each individual track on this album, but I'll try to group things together so I don't go on forever. The Vampyre of Time and Memory and Kalopsia show a soft, somber side to Queens that holds your attention with stunning underpinnings of piano. If I Had a Tail pairs seductive lyrics with a bombastic drum and riff combination, while My God Is the Sun uses tambourine and chugging guitar to conjure an endless march through the desert. Even a comparatively weaker track like Smooth Sailing has heaps to offer, with sonic switchups and blazing swagger.

Rappers sometimes talk about the third verse as a sign of effort, of a fully complete song. Queens have achieved the rock-and-roll equivalent, with a final-third switchup on nearly every song. They don't feel tacked on either, they're natural, essential, exciting expansions of the track's musical ideas. Homme's falsetto is pitch-perfect on this album, and he treads the line between fragile and confident with ease.

You can't mention ...Like Clockwork, though, without a section on its crowning jewel, the album's climax: I Appear Missing. Never has QOTSA been so emotionally cutting, so cinematic, in such complete command of their craft. Homme's lyrics are intense, recounting his near-death experience after a surgery-gone-wrong. His harrowing yells of "shock me awake, tear me apart" appear to be the album's emotional high point, until the last minute of the song reveals itself, which has to be heard to be believed. It is searing and euphoric and exciting and heartbreaking and everything you could ask for in a song. I Appear Missing is everything great about ...Like Clockwork summed up in six incredible minutes.

The title-track closes ...Like Clockwork in shockingly vulnerable fashion. It's a piano ballad, fragile as glass, almost unbearably tender. This is my favorite QOTSA album (with my favorite QOTSA album cover, nonetheless), and one of my all-time favorite albums. Give it a listen, you owe it to yourself. Again, no track highlights, the highlight reel would be 46 minutes long.

Villains (2017)

Villains expands QOTSA's repertoire of sounds into electronica, with synths and synthetic drums all over these nine tracks. Like ...Like Clockwork, Villains is mid-paced and consistent, but unlike ...Like Clockwork, Villains lacks those finishing touches, those expansions in the final third that help keep the tracks fresh. These songs are immobile, a problem accentuated by long runtimes. A third of this album's songs is over five minutes, another third is over six! To put it plainly, many of these songs don't hold my attention.

They're not bad, in fact, many feature some of Homme's best work as a frontman, and the album carries forward ...Like Clockwork's heavier focus on lyricism. Some songs, like The Way You Used To Do, felt kitsch at first, but I've acclimated to the new sound, and I've come around to its fun, carefree attitude. This is a good album, but it doesn't hold a torch to the best of the Queens. It lacks boldness. I hope this album can eventually be reassessed as a transitionary project, forecasting a direction fortified and mastered on a later record.

Some highlights include:

Feet Don't Fail Me, a funky opener that actually earns its length

The Way You Used To Do, a fun ride with great vocals

The Evil Has Landed, a searing epic with energetic cycling riffs

Conclusion

There we are! Queens of the Stone Age released a new album this past Friday, June 16th, titled In Times New Roman... I'll be doing an individual, in-depth review on that project soon for Tastemakers Magazine, and I'll be sure to post it here. Part of why I wanted to do this discog-dive is to prepare for that review, and along the way I solidified QOTSA as one of my favorite bands. I'd highly recommend checking them out, pick the album that sounded cool to you!

I like discog-dive as a format for future articles, but they'll likely be shorter in future installments. While writing about the earlier albums, I stretched to "have more to say," when I should've just written down my thoughts, tidied them up, and let them be. At the moment, I anticipate three main music-related series on this blog. Typical album reviews, which will be long, in-depth, and the product of multiple listens, will be the first. Next is discog-dives, like this one. Lastly is recommendations/impressions (I'm still tinkering with the title), which will be shorter reviews based on recommendations or other random albums I find interesting that won't require multiple listens. For recommendation-based reviews, I'll write the recommender's name at the top of the article. If you'd like me to review an album or film or anything else, there's a submission form near the bottom of the About page. Have a good day!