Self-proclaimed prehistoric royalty Queens of the Stone Age are back from the desert wastes of California, and they're putting the 'rock' back in 'blowing shit up' (in a healthy, non-terrorist kind of way). Now, it's no secret that, when it comes to rock's metal edge, these Queens want badly to be kings; you need look no further for proof than 2000's blistering, thuggish Rated R, on which frontman Josh Homme's searing guitars and theatrical vocals brought the band close enough to their goal to sniff the fleurs de lis. That, however, is history, and with Songs for the Deaf, the Queens have hit a new peak in their development: the sound is more massive, the chaos is more calculated, and with hired gun Dave Grohl at the kit, the band has an unprecedented drive that leaves them poised for their strongest bid for power yet.
"You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire" embodies the greatest strengths of rock at its hardest-- stunning riffs, breakneck speed, and guitars that churn and spit like a threshing machine. It's riddled with decades-old metal cliches, but the Queens know what their audience expects, and they use this knowledge to continually twist rock stereotypes into a vicious full-nelson until they beg for mercy. It's fantastic, and this is just the first track.
"No One Knows" changes Songs for the Deaf's pace by sliding into an easy groove, sleazing its way across a dimly-lit bar, half-drunk and reeking of cheap cologne, to put the moves on your girlfriend (or, you know, you, depending). This is four-to-the-floor slime of the highest quality, folks, and it's the second installment in this album's triad of genius, completed subsequently by the next track, "First It Giveth". "Giveth" brings the drama like a champ, with Homme singing in pained falsetto over punishing riffs during the verses, and opening up into aggro-overdrive for the appropriately apocalyptic chorus.
But along the path to greatness, there are pitfalls, and one Homme often falls into here is the old "chamber of lost souls" effect (made popular by Alice in Chains on some of their later albums), which he uses to fill out the backgrounds of some of these songs. The multitracked Hommes aaah'ing melodramatically in undead unison make slogging through "Hanging Tree" and "Go with the Flow" a pretty grim endeavor. It doesn't help that these songs churn along interminably long after their riffs have run dry, either. And worse still, the band has quit winking at their metal excesses entirely, toeing the line between mindless fun and xFC-metal gothery. Fortunately, this is only a temporary decline, but that these two tracks hit back-to-back in the dead center of the record makes for a much steeper dropoff than if they'd been sequenced farther apart.