Queens

Cannot wait to get my hands on this album

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Dude, they're not real "queens."

Don't get so excited.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Dude, they're not real "queens."

Don't get so excited.

A friend got me a copy of the new album and it is AMAZING. Better than songs for the deaf but not in quality just in depth. I think it comes out at the end of March.

I read on NME that Little Sister has been #1 on the British charts for the last couple of weeks and I know why, it is a kick ass, fast and a little English sounding.

I'm suprised to hear that someone would say they sucked live, I've seen them several times (all in small venues) and they blew me away. Especially that drummer and how well they pulled off some of their recorded stuff.

A friend got me a copy of the new album and it is AMAZING. Better than songs for the deaf but not in quality just in depth. I think it comes out at the end of March.

A friend got me a copy of the new album and it is AMAZING. Better than songs for the deaf but not in quality just in depth. I think it comes out at the end of March.

I read on NME that Little Sister has been #1 on the British charts for the last couple of weeks and I know why, it is a kick ass, fast and a little English sounding.

I'm suprised to hear that someone would say they sucked live, I've seen them several times (all in small venues) and they blew me away. Especially that drummer and how well they pulled off some of their recorded stuff.

Slave2daGroove said:

Don't wanna be all boring but this song hasn't even been released in the UK yet, so the "number 1" and "tearing up the charts" stories are a red herring, I'm afraid.


Having said that, cool band, pretty good song - bodes well for the album. Looks like those who said it would be no good without Grohl on board this time were wrong.....?



And btw LOVIN that cow bell










Stoopid dumb cabbage edit
[Edited 3/3/05 1:34am]

RocknRollDave said:

NME is my source, fuck them.

So, what is the new record like?

Is Little Sister a good representation of it or a we in for a few curveballs?

Isn't this the band who's guitar player comes out naked all the time?

okaypimpn said:

Yes, he has done that.

Isn't this the band who's guitar player comes out naked all the time?

okaypimpn said:

you know all I saw was Stone and Little Sister in the title without reading carefully.

I started singing "You're the One" in my head for no reason

Queens of the Stone Age

Lullabies To Paralyze


Originally released: 2005
Interscope Records

As lead guitarist and singer for one of hard rock's remaining bastions of old-fashioned chops, Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme had his work cut out for him on Lullabies to Paralyze. The previous Queens album, 2002's Songs for the Deaf, brought Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl back to the drum pedestal he had abandoned post-Nirvana and elevated the Queens to the platinum mainstream with the breakout radio/MTV hits "No One Knows" and "Go With the Flow."
Grohl's departure was predestined, but few could've predicted Homme's firing of founding bassist Nick Oliveri, a wildman whose telepathic musical connection to Homme defined the band's fury. Lullabies to Paralyze, the Queens' fourth album, suffers from Oliveri's departure and Grohl's absence. Drummer Joey Castillo lacks Grohl's wallop, and stopgap bassists can't replace Oliveri's melodic dexterity or his ingrained ability to dart around Homme's rigid riffs.

Ever since he first distanced himself from his teenage beginnings as the guitarist for early-Nineties stoner-metal band Kyuss, Homme has been caught between opposing aesthetics: He loves an extended jam (the first QOTSA album, all those Desert Session discs) as well as an extended joke (the fake radio announcements that interrupt Songs for the Deaf; his drumming on the garage-pop side project Eagles of Death Metal). He also admires extreme discipline, whether it's a taut, Teutonic-rock groove, a minimal but devastating guitar riff or a barely disguised pop tune. It's the tension between Homme's conflicting impulses that pressurizes Lullabies to Paralyze's highest points and accounts for its lows.

You've probably already heard "Little Sister," the first great rock single to hit radio in 2005. More like Foo Fighters than anything QOTSA created with Grohl, this compressed wonder -- all buzzing guitar lines, plus an explosive singalong chorus -- announces a further move away from traditional hard rock and toward the art punk of the Strokes and other modern popsters. Homme gets even more wired on "Medication," which streamlines QOTSA's blare to a combustive hum: The band hovers on one chord for most of its two minutes, then abruptly veers in jagged angles to heighten the drama.

A likely kiss-off to Oliveri, "Everybody Knows That You're Insane," winds even tighter. Beginning with a slow-burning slide guitar that soars like Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" layered over the final moments of the Beatles' "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," the skyrocketing intro creates a false sense of serenity before jump-cutting into a nasty blitzkrieg chorus thrash. Stereo guitars drive the song's tense verses as Homme and mates evoke the Buzzcocks with far more finesse than bands like Green Day ever do.

Lullabies falters when Homme returns to the protracted riffage of his past. Its back-to-back monster jams "Someone's in the Wolf" and "The Blood Is Love" occupy nearly fourteen droning minutes that unravel the breathless momentum of the previous eight tracks. Subsequent cuts like the piano-pounding "Broken Box" and the pensive "Long Slow Goodbye" rally somewhat but fail to match the first half's immediate intensity.

A cameo by returning QOTSA contributor Mark Lanegan lacks the spark of previous appearances, and Garbage's Shirley Manson and the Distillers' Brody Dalle are barely audible on the slinky "You Got a Killer Scene." The only outsider who adds something Homme couldn't have played or sung himself is ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, who lends his Texas guitar spice to the White Stripes-ish "Burn the Witch." Now that Homme is calling all the shots, he lacks both a manic foil to his confident cool as well as someone to rein in his inevitable deviations from what he does best: dark-chocolate rock with a soft, gooey center.



BARRY WALTERS