Kyuss didn’t invent desert rock, but they did codify it. They gave it shape. I don’t think that, coming off of 1991’s first album, Wretch (discussed here), the four-piece sat down and said, “Okay, now this is our sound and we’re going to have this much fuzz and this much of John yelling about random stuff,” but the then-four-piece of drummer Brant Bjork, bassist Nick Oliveri, guitarist Josh Homme and vocalist John Garcia, in collaboration with producer Chris Goss, who by then had already made a name for himself with Masters of Reality, organically, in punk rock-style, made a blueprint that bands from today’s heavy rock giants to demos waiting in my inbox have followed, the world over.

So while Kyuss weren’t the first desert rock band, they’re inarguably the most pivotal. About 20 years earlier it happened with a band called Black Sabbath absorbing the heft and darker sounds around them and winding up largely credited with inventing heavy metal. In neither case is the narrative actually so simple, like Brant Bjork scribbled the words ‘stoner rock’ on his high school notebook and the biopic takes off from there. But people need stories like that to make things make sense. The Ramones, Black Sabbath, Rush, The Beatles, Kyuss, Nirvana, Metallica — these names have become iconic over time, and Blues for the Red Sun, the second Kyuss album, released in 1992 through Dali Records, is where Kyuss‘ legacy really begins.

It is the first of a triptych kept holy by genre heads — Blues for the Red Sun in 1992, 1994’s self-titled/Welcome to Sky Valley (previously discussed here) and 1995’s …And the Circus Leaves Town — all three with Goss producing, and at this point, it is ingrained in the culture of underground heavy. Most of the ‘mother of them all’-type plaudits it has received over the years are right. The drift in the guitar at the outset of “Thumb.” “Freedom Run” fading in from that weirdo jam. “Allen’s Wrench” taking off at a sprint after the acoustic divergence of “Capsized.” The way instrumental “Molten Universe” seems to discover the largesse of its own roll in pulling away from the this-isn’t-grunge-and-it-isn’t-metal-it’s-something-else hookiness of “Thumb” and the urging-to-breakout chug of “Green Machine,” which, if this record didn’t already have a song called “Freedom Run,” would surely have earned the title regardless.

I’ll admit it had been a while, and a revisit feels a bit like kissing the ring for a record that many among the converted probably don’t even have to put on to hear in their heads, but the details are lost in mental jukebox manifestations, and Blues for the Red Sun has enough actual character in the band’s craft, delivery and production, that it’s worth appreciating the songs on their own level. Kyuss brought something different to post-Sabbath riffing than, say, Monster Magnet or C.O.C., with a languid flow to songs that didn’t necessarily have to be languid to harness it and a depth of tone in the guitar and specifically in Oliveri‘s bass — the wubbing swell in “Thong Song,” the way “Apothecaries’ Weight” seems to rest on a bed of low end, etc. — that became a defining element of the genre largely in Kyuss‘ wake.

And perhaps its a symptom of the era in which it was made — the early-1990s ascent of the compact disc as the format of choice over vinyl LPs — that it runs 50 minutes long, but part of what makes Blues for the Red Sun such a dynamic listen is the simple fact that its songs are going different places. It’s not the kind of record where you look at the tracklisting and every song is four and a half or five minutes long, there are seven or eight of them and that’s your record. “Thumb,” “Green Machine,” the structured parts of “Freedom Run,” “Allen’s Wrench,” even the where’s-the-guitar quirk of “Thong Song” and the bleary-eyed blowout that caps the record in the Oliveri-penned-and-vocalized “Mondo Generator” — the quick epilogue “Yeah” notwithstanding — give landmarks along the way, whether that’s a hook like in “Freedom Run” or a riff like in “Green Machine” or a standout thrust and careen like “Allen’s Wrench,” the four-piece work their way into and out of various aural adventures around the core groove in their approach.

Blues for the Red Sun isn’t perfect and it wouldn’t work if it was. As the first of three instrumentals — “Caterpillar March” digs in between “Apothecaries’ Weight” and “Freedom Run” to create arguably the most stoned part of the album, while the aforementioned “Capsized” is a 55-second guitar meditation rerouting from the fuzz and mellower vocals of “Writhe” to the full-sprint of “Allen’s Wrench,” which 33 years later retains its vibrancy and ferocity in kind. Reflecting varied stylistic intent on the part of the band, with Homme and Bjork as principal songwriters, Kyuss were able to create a fluid and immersive sense of place with their sophomore full-length in a way that neither their demo nor Wretch could.

Part of that, invariably, is owed to Goss‘ production, which gives clarity to the noise that Wretch wrought and seems to have had a hand in shaping some of the material as well. The instrumentals, interludes, and ‘parts-between’ as one song transitions to the next become crucial to the listening experience when one is taking it as a whole, but Blues for the Red Sun is just as likely to ensnare an audience with a catchier stretch than the hypnotic riff ride of “Caterpillar March.” That Kyuss could embody both things at this stage in their tenure is emblematic of the special band they were becoming and already were. They weren’t done growing, but there are arguments to be made for Blues for the Red Sun as Kyuss‘ peak, before the ascent to a major label brought new pressures, ambitions and the shrugging shoulders of a corporate music industry in decline.

This is the first time Kyuss really showed who they were on an album. Things would change quickly from here as Scott Reeder (Across the River, The Obsessed, Unida, Goatsnake, etc.) took over on bass and self-awareness crept into their their craft, and Blues for the Red Sun stands as a moment that would not come again and an unmistakable, still-expanding influence across generations of fans and artists. That jam in “Freedom Run?” That’s the freedom, man. Tastes like kicked up dust.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

This might’ve been my favorite Quarterly Review ever, and by that I mean it was absurdly easy to get through. I had three Hungarian classes this week and my 78-year-old mother wound up in the hospital after passing out behind the wheel and crashing into somebody (two broken ribs and a cracked sternum later, everybody’s very glad we got the Volvo because the car’s totaled and she isn’t; the other person in the accident was also okay), had the normal rounds of to-and-from-school driving and whatever else, and I still managed to finish further ahead than I think I ever have before. Momentum was good, the music was good, and I felt good writing. Pretty much the ideal.

I don’t know if that’s it for the year on QRs or not. I need to look at next month for real, when I’m going to put the poll and my own year-end list up, and still manage to review a few things before that happens. I’ll get there. Next week is Thanksgiving, so I might have a couple minutes with that going on. Or, more likely, not and I’ll wing it. Whatever.

Zelda update: I beat Ocarina of Time last night. No cheat codes. I hadn’t played it since high school and beat Ganondorf without taking damage, though his last phase as Ganon had me down to a quarter-heart (with two fairies in bottles to revive as necessary) before I delivered the final blow. It was a decent run. I died only once, to Bongo Bongo in the Shadow Temple. That was Tuesday night, maybe? I was so bummed I wrote an essay about it and sent it to ZeldaDungeon, whose walkthroughs I’ve been using, to see if they would publish it as an editorial. Haven’t heard back yet. If they don’t, I might put it here. But after doing Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, doing Ocarina of Time seemed very much to be getting to the root of it all. The gameplay was refined across those mainline games — in that regard, Twilight Princess might’ve been the most fluid — but Ocarina was where Zelda started to make a canon, a timeline, and a lot of the ‘Zelda stuff’ that typifies the franchise now, even in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom comes from Ocarina of Time.

I was struck by how much of it felt like levels. Like each dungeon was a callback to the original Legend of Zelda for being a series of dungeons tied together through journeying across an overworld. I guess that’s the format of all the games, to a point, but it felt especially prevalent this time. I played the remake for the 3DS both as a quality of life thing and to use a graphics mod to make it pretty, which it did. And brighter as well. I was thinking of going right into Majora’s Mask 3D — which I never played; I finished Ocarina of Time in 1999, decided I never needed to play another Zelda game again, and didn’t until we played Breath of the Wild as a family — though The Pecan was vehement in arguing she wanted me to do A Link Between Worlds — a partial remake of the SNES game A Link to the Past — next, so I installed that in my emulator as well, also with a graphics mod. I tested both and they work. We’ll see which I end up wanting to play more next, I guess. I really enjoyed going back to Ocarina of Time — it was also nice that it didn’t take me like a month to beat, which is because it’s an older game — and making my way through that, so Majora’s Mask is a natural next step as a sequel to that incorporating many of the same assets and elements. A Link Between Worlds is a little less severe and take-itself-s0-serious, and that would be refreshing as well, both after Ocarina and to lighten the mood generally.

That’s the update.

Monday I’ve got a Sorewound premiere and a bunch of news to catch up on. I hope to review Papir next week, and if I could do Dead Hits on top of that, so much the better, but I never know how it’s going to go these days until I get there and see, so basically I need to wait for that, whatever my ambitions might be.

Gonna go run some errands with The Patient Mrs. in a few ahead of a weekend that promises no real relief from the stress of the days before it and will surely leave me punchdrunk heading into the holiday next week. Speaking of, I probably won’t post much Wednesday, Thursday or Friday as we’ll have family in town and my time will be limited, but I’ll do my best as always.

If you celebrate or don’t, I appreciate you reading. Thank you for your time, your patience with my run-on sentences, for having an open mind for music. All of it. Thank you.

Enjoy the weekend, hydrate, and I’m back Monday. Fuck fascism. Free Palestine.

FRM.

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Tags: Blues for the Red Sun, California, Dali Records, Kyuss, Kyuss Blues for the Red Sun, Palm Desert

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2025 at 9:29 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.