Queens of the Stone Age

Stoner rock is largely thought of as a sub-genre of heavy metal, but Queens of the Stone Age, perhaps its most prolific band, far transcends its limitations. This has been increasingly true as they've regenerated from the ashes of Kyuss. Now that they're really just the Josh Homme show on their new album, Lullabies to Paralyze, it's more true than ever.

While most stoner rock takes its cues from either Black Sabbath or Ted Nugent, QOTSA seems to have a much broader view of music. The first track, "This Lullaby" is best taken as simply an intro that sets a tone of dark irony. It's one of Mark Lanegan's two vocal appearances on the album, but his haunting voice is unsettling over the otherwise soothing music. Unfortunately, the transition into the rest of the album is abrupt and might be one of the album's few bad moments.

The rest of the album keeps that underlying (and perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek) darkness while jumping all over the musical map. The album relies a lot on fuzz-soaked, falsetto-voiced 70s hard rock mixed up with the driving energy of its very antithesis, punk rock, on tracks like "Medication" and "Little Sister," but while its the album's staple, it's not its real strength. They mix this up with a bit of laid-back swing in the intro to "Everybody Knows That You Are Insane," giving the song a bit more depth. Things are scaled back a bit for the shuffling "Tangled Up in Plaid," a potential single in my mind. Lanegan returns on the Doors-like spookiness of "Burn the Witch," which gets some wonderfully understated bluesy guitar work from ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons (maybe the king of fuzzy 70s guitar). "In My Head" is a pulsing, layered song that might be the best example of one of the album's strongest points, its ability to vary itself in layers over a rather redundant rhythm (kind of like an organic techno in a very loose sense or like blues in a very real sense). It's another great possibility as a single. Another influence pops up in the lighter, "I Never Came." It never ceases to be a clear stoner tune despite its power-pop ballad leanings. QOTSA dabble in almost Zappa-like prog rock with "Someone's in the Wolf" and then up the freak-out factor (and the fuzz factor) on "Skin on Skin," an insane ride through echo-laden sludge that never ceases to groove. "Skin on Skin" is one of the album's best tracks, but they can forget it as a single. The soulful, sultry "You Got a Killer Scene There Man" finishes up the overtly dark aspects of the album. The boogie and hooks of the album's final track, "Long Slow Goodbye," might let you miss its darkness on a superficial listen, but will still leave you with a strange uneasiness, especially with the horn part after the false ending.

Lullabies to Paralyze is yet another step forward for Queens of the Stone Age. It probably lacks the break-out single that they had with Songs for the Deaf's "Go with the Flow," but what great rock album can be judged by singles anyway? They perfect the droning pulse that puts the stoner in stoner rock, but unlike their contemporaries, QOTSA incorporate a broad understanding of disparate styles into a cohesive whole. Often this occurs in layers to their music that is simply absent even in the music of other very good bands. Will QOTSA save rock n roll? Well, I'm not sure it needs saving, but if it did, they'd have as good a shot as anyone.