Kyuss and Queens Of The Stone Age

On their records, Kyuss seem intent on condensing the very essence of hard rock, as if aiming to record the ultimate hard rock album�after which nothing could be said that hadn�t already been said. Kyuss created albums that are both disorienting symphonies for bulldozers and bombers, and at the same time �adagio� passages worthy of acid rock. They effectively gave birth to the �stoner� genre.

Kyuss vented the frustrations and tensions of youth in a small town like Palm Desert, hidden in the Southern California desert. After a rare Sons Of Kyuss (1990), the four very young members debuted with Wretch (Dali, 1991), containing material dating back to 1988, marked by brutal psychedelic hard-blues in the vein of Blue Cheer, mixed with the most visionary detonations of Chrome and the most criminal devastations of Discharge.
Hwy 74 is something of the archetype of their style: an exaggeration of the current that flows from the blues through rock and roll to hard rock. The pyrotechnic, powerful drumming is front and center, the guitar chaos is pushed to manic extremes, and the vocals always hover over sinister, threatening tones, fueling a progression toward increasingly raw musicality, ultimately toward �Noise.�

Sound hurricanes follow one another without pause: Black Widow (a Doors-style blues), Katzenjammer (acrobatic rock and roll), and Love Has Passed Me By (a vibrant, supersonic Southern boogie) create repeated seismic shocks. Their inspiration comes not so much from Black Sabbath�although their approach is equally monolithic and sensationalist�as from Pink Floyd and Texas psychedelic bands. The album triumphs not so much for the quality of its compositions, which tend to resemble one another, but for the enormous, abnormal electricity of its execution, recalling the fiery atmosphere of Blue Cheer and MC5 concerts.
Kyuss deliver a relentless massacre: Brant Bjork�s tempestuous, unyielding drumming, Josh Homme�s waves of searing feedback, Nick Oliveri�s subsonic bass jolts, and John Garcia�s vibrant, cannibalistic vocals form one of the most threatening sonic conglomerates ever. Despite the elephantine racket, the choruses remain clearly suspended above the instruments.

Blues For The Red Sun (Dali, 1992) is even more exhilarating and catastrophic, one of the masterpieces of noise-rock. To the listener appears an impenetrable wall of unpleasant sounds: the bulldozer-like� rhythm of Thumb (perhaps Homme�s first great solo) gives a sense of pace and charge to the full-throttle assault of Alien�s Wrench (their own Communication Breakdown) and the overwhelming onslaught of Green Machine (the most melodic and heavy-metal of the set). These are tracks endowed with terrible breakthrough power.
The masterpieces are even more ferocious: the supersonic chases and vertiginous tribal rhythms of 50 Million Year Trip (apocalyptic crescendos culminating in spasms reminiscent of Whole Lotta Love), the torrential hard-rock bursts and swampy voodoo-blues atmosphere of the instrumental Apothecaries� Weight, and the suffocating Chrome-like harmonies (full of filtered screams, cascading riffs, and hammering rhythms) of Mondo Generator compose one of the greatest sonic disasters in rock history. Kyuss explore bottomless abysses, indulging in psychedelic hard rock (Hawkwind, Pink Fairies, but above all Hendrix) that triumphs in the eight minutes of molten lava and ominous echoes of Freedom Run.
The album is also sprinkled with brief abstract pieces that prepare the ground for guerrilla incursions and familiarize the listener with hyper-militant syntax: the hypnotically driving riffs of Caterpillar March, the slow bulldozer pace of the instrumental Molten Universe, and the sinister black ritual atmospheres of 800. In these claustrophobic aphorisms lie the quintessence and paranoia of gothic hard rock. The whole is complemented by extended jams that could not feel more out of place�like oases in the desert�and even by sleepwalking blues such as Thong Song.
Kyuss� rock is a sound that, alongside Half Lip Machine and Kick Out The Jams, stands as one of the most monstrous ever.

Their third album, Welcome To Sky Valley (Elektra, 1994), features Scott Reeder (formerly of Obsessed) replacing Oliveri. Aside from the exhausting drill of riffs on Gardenia and the terrifying assault of Odyssey (essentially Black Sabbath at double speed), the album forgoes the same murderous intensity and gets lost in occasional �acid� flourishes (the acoustic flamenco of Space Cadet). This time, Kyuss lean more toward sensationalist tracks, hypnotic melodies, heavy-metal emphasis, and fashionable grunge tones. The peak is perhaps Supa Scoopa And Mighty Scoop, with frenzied Led Zeppelin-like rides and a Hendrixian instrumental coda full of neuroses, rivaling the single Sky Valley Part III, a long �scorching� improvisational suite in the style of In A Gadda Da Vida but with guitar instead of organ.
Capping the album is the Demon Cleaner EP, a hypnotic litany in which the guitar riff has become pure filler.

And The Circus Leaves Town (Elektra, 1995) has largely lost the primal ferocity of the first record: Kyuss now present themselves as master interpreters of the Deep Purple of Highway Star (in Hurricane) and the Led Zeppelin of How Many More Times (in One Inch Man), building on that foundation a powerful harmonic structure, within which Blue Cheer and Cream-style sounds resound endlessly. John Garcia�s psychedelic chanting and the long instrumental openings and codas have been balanced and polished to perfection, giving the impression of classical composure (or lack thereof, depending on perspective). The titanic riffs of the instrumental jam The Old Boozerooney, the visceral blues of Gloria Lewis, and the almost prog-rock finale of Spaceship Landing attest to this.
As always, Kyuss like to shake things up with some more psychedelically dazed tracks. The melody then infiltrates the turbulent grunge of Tangy Zizzle, and Catamaran collapses into a soft, lilting chant.

Josh Homme, the genius behind Kyuss, formed Queens Of The Stone Age on the ashes of the old line-up (recruiting prodigal son Nick Oliveri on bass and retaining Alfredo Hernandez on drums). Homme has friends, as proven by the Desert Sessions (Man's Ruin, 1999) improvised in the desert with a multitude of rock celebrities. The early line-up for the new band (originally named Gamma Ray) was a who's who of grunge. These uninspired jams/demos would continue and reach a tenth volume in 2003.

Refining and normalizing the psychedelic hard-rock coined with Kyuss, Homme found the way to success. Queens Of The Stone Age (Roadrunner, 1998) is stoner-rock for the masses. The album pivots on If Only Everything, the archetype of Homme's melodic conversion. His acid riffs are nonetheless titanic compared with the competition of Monster Magnet and Fu Manchu.

If the debut album was even too homogeneous and monolitic, Rated R (Interscope, 2000) does the opposite and finds Homme's combo differentiating in too many style. Homme's vision may have lost something to the band's sound (a band augmented by guitarist and keyboardist Dave Catching, and with former Kyuss drummer Gene Trautmann replacing former Kyuss Hernandez). Feel Good Hit Of The Summer displays the sonic power of the first album, the melodic exorcism submerged in Hendrix-grade bursts of guitars and panzer riffs, and Tension Head is even fiercer. But several tracks redraw the map: Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret, possibly the catchiest refrain, employs a classy arrangement of vibraphone, piano and sax; Auto Pilot is a mellow shuffle with a guitar riffs that homage Neil Young; Better Living Through Chemistry is trascendental raga-metal. However, the band never forgets to appeal to a broad audience. In fact, Monsters In The Parasol could be a ditty by the Hollies, with a hard-rock guitarist filling in for Graham Nash. The 8-minute I Think I Lost My Headache, with its anthemic riff, its Indian-infected psalm, its instrumental interlude, and its horns-based coda, is a their modest Stairway To Heaven. The focus of the album is, nonetheless, melody.

Brant Bjork's solo Jalamanta (Man's Ruin, 1999) is a surprise, as it shares little or nothing with Kyuss' stoner sound. Bjork harks back to the 1960s and to the 1970s for some loose psychedelic blues jamming, occasionally propelled by a killer riff (Automatic Fantastic).

After a brief stint with Slo Burn, that released the EP Amusing The Amazing (Malicious, 1997), John Garcia formed Unida, that debuted with the EP The Best Of Wayne Gro. Their full-length album Coping With The Urban Coyote (Man's Ruin, 1999) is the ultimate hard-rock album, a scientific catalog of the genre's cliches. Garcia's stunning vocal delivery enhances the band's inspired and rousing imitations of Free (Thorn), Mountain (Human Tornado), Motorhead, Granf Funk Railroad, and many more (bordering on punk-rock in Dwarf It). Emphatic, thundering and melodramatic, the songs turn cliches into weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, the turbulent and incendiary nine-minute You Wish reinvents the power-ballad in the age of stoner-rock. Occasionally outstanding (the epyleptic and booming rock and roll Black Woman, a master performance by guitarist Arthur Seay), Unida's first album is an epic tribute to Garcia's roots the way Spielberg's films are tributes to his own childhood. Unfortunately, their second album, The Great Divide (2001), will be canceled due to contractual problems.

Mondo Generator is Nick Oliveri (on vocals and bass), helped out by Josh Homme, Brant Bjork, and others, playing music that is a punk-rock version of stoner-rock. The band's name harks back to Blues For The Red Sun, but Cocaine Rodeo (Southern Lord, 2000) sounds more like Henry Rollins, Fugazi, Jesus Lizard, and even Big Black. Exploding Man is a tour de force of evil sounds. Mondo Generator's second album, A Drug Problem that Never Existed (Ipecac, 2003), was a major disappointment, a set of bland songs performed in a shallow manner.

Brant Bjork also recorded with the Operators (Music Cartel, 2002) an album with which he continued the eclectic experiments of his solo album (Electric Lalli Land, HInda65, Ghettoblasters). Local Agent (Duna, 2004) was rather uneventful, but the colossal Saved By Magic (Duna, 2005) marked a detour into roots-music. The mediocre Somera Sol (2007) was credited to Brant & The Bros.

Alfredo Hernandez started a new supergroup, Orquestra del Desierto (Meteorcity, 2002) with Fatso Jetson's guitarist Mario Lalli and Goatsnake's vocalist Peter Stahl, a project continued on Dos (2004). Songs For The Deaf (Interscope, 2002), the third album by the Queens Of The Stone Age, is their most refined. Not a note/riff is wasted. The Queens return to the super-heavy sound of their debut but with a much improved melodic edge; which may or may not be due to the addition of the Foo Fighters's drummer Dave Grohl and the Screaming Trees' vocalist Mark Lanegan to the line-up of founding members Oliveri (bass) and Homme (guitar). Now a supergroup, the Queens take advantage of Nirvana's patented cliche` (gentle vocal melody and crushing guitar-driven explosion) in songs such as The Sky Is Fallin', but they lack the hysteria of the masters. Despite the Free-like vocal and guitar histrionics of No One Knows and the Cream-like blues gymnastics of A Song For The Dead, they lean towards the melodic side of the equation (shamelessly in Do It Again and the swirling Another Love Song, ditties that seem to hark back from the era of bubblegum pop). It is not a coincidence that Gonna Leave You echoes I've Got A Line On You by an old band that specialized in similar melodic hard-rock, Spirit. In this vein, Go With the Flow is perhaps the most original vehicle: boogie piano, catchy refrain and romantic mellotron. The quartet can hypnotize with the primal, bluesy God Is on the Radio (Lanegan on vocals and another Homme super-solo), and sculpt the haunting atmosphere of the brooding Song for the Deaf, but mostly their instrumental skills seem to be wasted. Their stoner-rock credentials are only a memory: this sounds more like the return of the Foo Fighters.

Homme also worked on a side project, the Eagles of Death Metal, meant to be some kind of joke on death metal, as the title of their debut album implied: Peace, Love and Death Metal (2004). It was followed by Death By Sexy (2006) and Heart On (2008).

With the leader perhaps galvanized by the sales of the third album, the Queens Of The Stone Age came to represent mainly Josh Homme's ego on Lullabies To Paralyze (Interscope, 2005), the first album without Oliveri. His cohorts (A Perfect Circle's guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, and drummer Joey Castillo) mattered less and less. Medication, Little Sister (with another heroic fuzzed solo by Homme), Someone's In The Wolf and You've Got a Killer Scene There Man were typical of self-indulgent pop stars, recycling the sound of the hits while trying to slip in bits and pieces of frustrated ego. The stories were explicitly sinister, dealing with the whole spectrum of atrocities (murder, suicide, torture, madness, black magic). Era Vulgaris (2007), that does not include Era Vulgaris (a collaboration with Nine Inch Nails, continued the drift towards a stream of consciousness that was both carefully crafted and privately emotional (Misfit Love, Sick Sick Sick, Turning On The Screw). This album marked an important milestone for Homme: throughout his career, from Kyuss to Queens Of The Stone Age, there had been an underlining blues motif. Lullabies To Paralyze and now Era Vulgaris largely dispensed with vestiges of blues music. The Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl, Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme and Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones formed the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures (2009) that sounded like a Led Zeppelin tribute band.

Homme fronted a new version of Queens Of The Stone Age on Like Clockwork (2013), without Joey Castillo and with Dave Grohl on drums and returning bassist Nick Oliveri. This edition of the band opted for a melodic and mellow sound (I Sat By The Ocean, but not the hysterical single My God Is the Sun) and the album is a concentrate of derivative riffs (If I Had a Tail sounds like the Rolling Stones performing a cover of Phil Spector's Da Doo Ron Ron), bordering on parody (the martial David Bowie-esque piano ballad The Vampyre Of Time And Memory, the Elton John collaboration Fairweather Friends which actually sounds like vintage Cream).

Queens Of The Stone Age's Villains (Matador, 2017), produced by Mark Ronson of Uptown Funk fame, marked a return to old-fashioned swagger. A couple of songs land above mediocrity (the ZZ Top-ian boogie The Way You Used to Do and the Cramps-ian psychobilly Head Like a Haunted House) but the material is mostly inferior. The Evil Has Landed throws in a few Led Zeppelin cliches but can't figure out what to do with them. It would have been a leftover on even the weakest Led Zeppelin album. The syncopated and jagged Feet Don't Fail Me tries to prove its reason to exist with a few synth lines. Un-Reborn Again and Villains of Circumstance employ similar (inept) detours to keep the listener from falling asleep. Homme�s desperate attempts to sound melodic don't help. To be fair, the prog-rock mini-suite Villains of Circumstance does find a memorable refrain worthy of Sixties pop, but it's too little too late.