The Queens\u2019 eighth studio album title is\u2026 a font joke. Really. It\u2019s also their first album since 2017 and one of their most personal and hard-hitting outings in quite some time.<\/p>\n
Much of that is due to singer\/bandleader Josh Homme\u2019s personal turmoil\u2014divorce, cancer diagnosis, pandemic, loss of a good friend\u2014but rather than wallow, he and the band turn in a hooky, hard-rocking album with enough twists to keep things interesting. Much like how Dave Grohl used the deaths of his mother and Taylor Hawkins to fuel the most recent Foo Fighters album (making it the group\u2019s best outing in the last 20 years), so too do Homme and company come strong on these 10 tracks.<\/p>\n
About the only thing missing from this album is the sort of snarky\/stoner humor that colored Songs For The Deaf<\/i>, long held as the best Queens album to date, but given its inception this is understandable. The best moments here do remind the listener of that album and its follow-up Lullabies To Paralyze<\/i>, particularly the revved-up Black Keys stomp and vocal drone of \u201cTime & Place,\u201d the riffage of \u201cNegative Space\u201d and the swagger-meets-strings of second single \u201cCarnavoyeur,\u201d a dark left-field alt-rocker of the sort that these guys do so well.<\/p>\n
Homme\u2019s voice seems to have taken on a late-period David Bowie tenor, especially on \u201cWhat The Peephole Say\u201d and \u201cMade To Parade,\u201d giving the songs a bit more gravity than perhaps they deserve, while \u201cSicily\u201d brings a Middle Eastern vibe and an unsettling atmosphere; I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s good or not, but it\u2019s definitely interesting. And while there\u2019s no dance rock or shine here\u2014it\u2019s definitely the rawest Queens album of the three-record Matador deal\u2014there\u2019s a beat and pop smarts to first single \u201cEmotion Sickness,\u201d especially in how the raw, chunky verse pivots to a lovely harmony-filled chorus. It\u2019s not even close to a \u201chit single\u201d in any definition of the term, and maybe Queens fans want it that way. <\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s the nine-minute closer \u201cStraight Jacket Fitting,\u201d which locks into a groove and one riff and just rides that sucker, stopping once for a cello-assisted solo, and featuring lyrics like \u201cOh, piss on the clergy, the new age heathens\u2026 The hand-made jury, cage-free corporate raiders \/ Patriotic, probiotic, deletist, e-racist \/ The world, yeah, she don\u2019t need savin\u2019 \/ \u2019Cept from you and me and our misbehavin\u2019.\u201d So that gives you an idea of the tenor here; the lyrics are understandably bleak, at times, but can you blame the guy? The song then closes with a two-minute acoustic\/keyboard outro, perhaps to calm everyone down after the pounding of the previous 45 minutes.<\/p>\n
What kind of Queens fan you are will determine what you get out of this album, because it\u2019s not for everybody. If you just come for \u201cNo One Knows\u201d and \u201cMy God Is The Sun\u201d and other hits, there\u2019s little here that you will add to your playlist. If you like the sludge with a hint of prog-rock and middle-period Zeppelin, then come on in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":34810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6538],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-46674","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-queens-of-the-stone-age","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46674"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}