I come and go with Queens of the Stone Age. More dilletante than superfan. The first three records — 1998’s self-titled debut (discussed here), 2000’s Rated R, 2002’s Songs for the Deaf — are largely unfuckwithable, and the source of much of the influence they’ve had over heavy rock over the last quarter-century. I’ll stand by most of 2005’s Lullabies to Paralyze on a songwriting level, though its stated intent at the time was to pick up where Songs for the Deaf left off, and sure enough, that was a moment that had passed. The first half’s singles were cool, but side B was where it was really at there, as founding frontman Joshua Homme, who had cut his teenage teeth in Kyuss, let the songs get weirder and more open.

Once you get into Era Vulgaris (2007), you lose me, and though 2013’s …Like Clockwork (review here, discussed here) had s-o-n-g-s that stuck with you, in some cases whether you wanted them to or not — looking at you, “If I Had a Tail” — I reread my review of 2017’s Villains ahead of writing this piece and couldn’t recall a single track from it. I heard one of the singles from 2023’s …In Times New Roman, and it sounded bloated, cloying and willfully mediocre, and while I know Homme is too skillful a songwriter to do one thing for a whole record, I had neither the time nor the inclination to hear it play out. Maybe some day I’ll get there, and if you dug it, I’m glad. Not going to argue.

It had been a while since I heard Rated R, but had occasion to encounter the record on a recent night under Croatian stars, and as will happen, it’s been in my head (hey! that’s a QOTSA reference!) since. Time has done little to dull the potency of this material or the collaborations that do so much to enrich it, whether that’s Homme stepping aside for then-bassist Nick Oliveri‘s lead vocals on “Auto Pilot,” the raging “Quick and to the Pointless” and “Tension Head” (which was originally a song by Oliveri‘s other band, the ongoing Mondo Generator), or the late Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan giving a low-key career performance on “In the Fade.” What had been a basic three-piece on the self-titled grew expansive without losing its expressive immediacy or crucial hooks, and so a cut like “The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret” blossomed as a landmark while the weirdo bounce of “Leg of Lamb” and the lightly psychedelic “Better Living Through Chemistry” enriched the impression of Rated R as a whole work. Did I already say “unfuckwithable?” Okay, good.

Others sat in as well. Masters of Reality‘s Chris Goss (who also produced at least part of it, helmed Kyuss LPs, etc.), Pete Stahl of Goatsnake and earthlings?, Screaming Trees‘ Barrett Martin, Fatso Jetson‘s Mario Lalli getting a writing credit on “Monsters in the Parasol,” born in the Homme-led Desert Sessions, and famously even Rob Halford of Judas Priest joining the gang shouts on “Feel Good Hit of the Summer” for the substance-abuse shopping list hook of “Nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol.” There are more: Gene Trautmann and Nick Lucero sharing drum duties, Reggie Young‘s horns going free-jazz as eight-minute closer “I Think I Lost My Headache” slogs toward its finish, and so on, but the point is that no matter who is adding what to the cauldron, it’s all identifiably part of Queens of the Stone Age, and what would in so many other contexts be disjointed works precisely because it’s arrogant and genuinely swaggering enough to go where it wants in terms of sound and mood.

Rated R remains heavy in tone — stretches where the guitar seems to come forward and dominate the mix like the choruses of “The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret” and “In the Fade” prove the point — but there’s almost always melody to cut through, with the noteworthy exceptions of the Oliveri-fronted punkers “Quick and to the Pointless” and “Tension Head.” These, though, are still catchy in their way, and the element of danger, of unpredictability, of threat, they add to the proceedings shouldn’t be underestimated. You never know when Queens of the Stone Age might cocaine-scream spitting into your face, and as unpleasant as that sounds on paper, it’s part of what makes the record stronger and further-reaching. Dave Catching‘s instrumental “Lightning Song,” a dreamy two-minute interlude to hypnotize and set the mood before the finale, does the same thing in a different way, while the reprise of “Feel Good Hit of the Summer” in “In the Fade” gives a thematic shape to the overarching flow, even if the theme is hi-we’re-on-drugs-in-the-desert-fuck-you-but-also-let’s-be-friends.

It preceded Homme‘s well-earned reputation for onstage dickery, preceded the rock stardom that would come just two years later as Songs for the Deaf offered hits in the already-dwindling-by-then sphere of radio. It was an expansion on the ideas the self-titled laid out, ultimately, but with a character that remains singular after all this time, whether it’s put next to the rest of the Queens of the Stone Age catalog with its various ups, downs and sideways turns, or any of the literally thousands of other bands and records working from it as a central point of influence. I know I’m not saying anything you don’t already know about it, but nearly 25 years after the fact, how much is there really to say? It’s classic rock. All the more so for its defiant-seeming individualism and blend of laid-back, ultra-apathy post-grunge Gen-X cool and moments of fervent thrust, songs that have more reach than most bands do in entire careers in four minutes or less and probably weren’t self-aware enough to be pretentious about it.

As the songs play out in succession again on the mental jukebox, I’m happy to have them. I used to think nostalgia was a weakness, but it turned out I just hadn’t had enough life experience to look back on anything fondly yet. A stupid, young opinion. I find now that whether a moment is recent or happened decades ago, if it’s worth remembering at all — and so many of these moments are related to music for me that it’s actually kind of embarrassing — that’s a thing worth embracing. Most of existence is shitty and hard. Take what you can, put your head down, keep working. My life is better for having had Rated R in it.

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

—

Budapest. We’ve been here for over a week now. It’s been difficult getting settled. Adjusting. The apartment we’re staying in is on the fifth floor of an old building in the Astoria (Queens!) section of town, and is designed like a bourgeois daydream offset by the realities of ants in the bathroom, breakable Ikea furniture, the busted washer, the dog peeing on the couch this past Wednesday, and so on. I’m sure if we were fabulously wealthy, it would all work out. As it stands, we spent all the money, forever, on making this trip happen and have learned the hard lesson that it’s not a sustainable way we can live. Nor can we fly home early, which would cost an additional three grand in addition to the emotional labor of admitting defeat. And we’re talking about how 95 degrees is a break from the heat. You gotta be kidding me.

There’s a lot to like about Hungary, even beyond my continued interest in learning its strange, Carpathian-born language. If you’ve ever used a European toilet, you know there are also things that America does better, and these tradeoffs are the stuff of life. Gorgeous old buildings? No ducts in any of them, and no refrigeration infrastructure, so if you want to buy ice or sit in air conditioning you’re probably screwed. And somehow this entire continent has decided that clothes dryers are what caused the climate crisis, which is adorable and hopeless in kind. I’m grateful to be here, but I don’t know that it could ever be home. Shit, Massachusetts couldn’t be home.

The Patient Mrs. has been kind in granting me writing time this week, which is how the Causa Sui review happened, how The Swell Fellas and Circle of Sighs premieres happened and the various news stories. But there’s been friction there as well. The Pecan got kicked out of day camp after a day and a half for fighting — and before you celebrate that like “yeah stick it to the man!” let me stop you; it’s not righteous defiance, it’s neurodivergent overwhelm; same reason she dug her nails into my arm the other day as I pulled her back from the metro platform where a train was oncoming — and while predictable, it’s nonetheless a sad drag that left us this week wondering how to fill our days. Yesterday we took a bus that went in the Danube River that, despite the purported AC, was hot enough that I was sweating sitting still listening to the English audio tour tell me about the various horrors the Magyar people have faced over the centuries from Huns, Nazis, Communists, and so on — “If you look to your right you’ll see a beautiful bridge. It was a popular place for suicides….” I shit you not — and struggles with food, hydration, medication don’t help. Look at me, complaining on vacation. If it helps you at all (I know it doesn’t help me), I feel like shit about it.

And bringing the dog was a mistake, but she’s a year old and we didn’t really have a choice. The Pecan stims on her though, and it gets to be a lot. First thing this morning I pulled her arm off her bending the dog’s leg the wrong way and ended up arm-barring her in the nose. “You hurt my nose,” is not a thing a parent wants to wake up hearing. I felt like shit about that too.

Life, then. I don’t know what we’re doing today yet but I know I’m coming up against time so need to punch out and get to it. Whatever it is, it will be exhausting. Everything is.

Next week I don’t know. I want to review Orange Goblin for Monday. I promise nothing beyond that I’ll do my best with the time I get and I’ll try really, really hard to be grateful for that.

Have a great and safe weekend.

FRM.

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Some records are just ingrained in you. As I remember it, I first encountered Primus‘ 1991 second album and major label debut, Sailing the Seas of Cheese, at about 10 years old in my sister’s CD collection. This would’ve been when it was more or less new, before the follow-up EP, 1992’s Miscellaneous Debris, because I remember when that came out. I swiped the disc and it was like my soon-to-be-pubescent, soon-to-meet-Beavis-and-Butt-Head goofball ass found a home. I’ve lived with it basically since that time, revisiting periodically, and it’s been a bit, so here I am. This album changed my life as a kid, and it still satisfies listening as an adult for more than nostalgic purposes. I count it as one among very, very few.

What a collection of songs. Into a 45-minute span, Primus — bassist/vocalist Les Claypool, guitarist Larry LaLonde, drummer Tim Alexander, plus a bunch of their friends peppered throughout — cram banger after banger. You’ve got the intro, and even that has a hook, then you get into “Here Come the Bastards,” “Sgt. Baker,” “American Life” and “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” in succession. Holy shit. And even more insane, they’re all so short. “Here Come the Bastards” is under three minutes. In less than three minutes, Primus build and launch that groove, establish and execute that chorus, and roll out a weighted tonality that still carries its heft while dancing in circles doing high-knees.

Across its span, Sailing the Seas of Cheese is a tighter record than 1990’s Frizzle Fry (discussed here), and the tradeoff it makes between atmosphere and impact serves cuts like “Sgt. Baker” — recall the first Gulf War was on when the album was being made — and the later “Tommy the Cat,” the frenetic jazz showoff “Is it Luck,” on which LaLonde shreds guitar and Alexander shreds drums no less than Claypool does bass, or the band as a whole does a number on ‘what makes a radio hit.’

Even the side B pairing of “Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers” and “Fish On (Fisherman Chronicles, Ch. II),” where they do branch out more than a little, is more delightfully odd, more weirdo psychedelic in the case of the latter — though as far out as they go into Interscope Records-backed avant garde heavy funk rock, they bring it back to the chorus before they’re done, because songwriting — and the manner in which the concluding “Los Bastardos” reprises the central progression of “Here Come the Bastards” with samples from The Young Ones laced over top is emblematic of the jam band Primus would become after reuniting in the aughts.

Consider “Eleven” — too offbeat to be a single, brilliantly drummed, catchy, something about salsa — and tucked in between “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” and “Is it Luck?” in arguably one of the least enviable positions a song from the ’90s could be in if it wanted to stand out, but it does. It’s got vibe and chorus both. It’s heavy, it’s undeniably their own, and it legitimately works in concert with the rest of the material here to do something in rock and roll that had never been done before. Not just decentralizing the guitar — because if you listen to this, Frizzle Fry, 1993’s Pork Soda, 1995’s Tales From the Punchbowl, etc., and there’s no shortage of guitar — but in songwriting and personality. This was a new kind of fun at the time, and resonates 31 years later not only because the level of craft is so high — that is, each of its three main players is brilliant — but because no one else in the last three-plus decades has managed to come along and outdo it at its own game.

The back and forth between faster and slower songs on side A, with “Here Come the Bastards” into “Sgt. Baker,” is mirrored by the dizzying “Is it Luck?” moving into the interlude “Grandad’s Little Ditty” before the “Tommy the Cat” — which, yes, has guest vocals from Tom Waits; nobody’s perfect — takes hold and builds an entire world in its 4:15, the sharp turns and razor wit of the lyrics one more reason to fully immerse. Side B’s personality is a little different, as it should be, with the banjo-inclusive “Sathington Waltz” feeling (purposefully) thrown together as if to signal that the rest of the proceedings are going to push even further into the reaches of peculiarity, which of course they do, however memorable “Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers” proves to be nonetheless.

And yes, “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” was a smash. Unavoidable for a bit there, and undeniable. As their career has played out, “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” has followed Primus all the while, and I can’t even fathom how many times Claypool has chuckled and said, “Dog will hunt” into a microphone at this point. Thousands, surely. Doesn’t matter, the end of that track crushes, taking all that we’re-gonna-do-bass low end and pushing it alongside harder hitting drums and fuller guitar distortion to create a sound that Pork Soda and later records like 1997’s Brown Album and 1999’s Antipop would continue to explore, the band flirting with the idea that maybe they were a heavy metal band before pulling the plug on the whole endeavor for a few years and sending Claypool into a wilderness of side-projects, many of them righteous — you won’t hear me say a bad word about the Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, dammit; “who wants to go to D’s Diner?” — but all of them a signifier that there would only ever be one Primus.

They’ve been on tour this year covering Rush, which tracks. I’ve made the argument a few times over the years for Primus as a heavy rock band, and I still wonder how the late ’90s and early ’00s would have played out for them if that language existed at the time, because they’ve never been about the aggressive side of metal even as they more than flirted with tonal weight. Whatever they were going to be classified as, they’d always be themselves, surely, and Queens of the Stone Age did Ozzfest too that time, so I don’t know that being heavy rock would’ve prevented the hiatus that stopped the band for a long few years in 2000, but in hindsight, it’s an easier fit as a kind of creative ecosystem than either metal or hard rock, which is where they were most commonly lumped. I’ll gladly go to bat for them having more in common with Kyuss than Powerman 5000, or any other ’90s commercial hard rock entity you want to substitute.

But what is, is, and Sailing the Seas of Cheese remains a singular work of genius songwriting and performance, one of the best records of its decade, for me, one of the best records of all time, and as always, I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for reading.

—

I needed this, I don’t mind telling you. This week has been long, hard and largely miserable. My knee is starting to get better — still hurts to straighten it out, but I can move it more — and this morning I go for the results of the MRI that I had done Wednesday evening, so that should be interesting [update: I need surgery], but everything has been a drag. Everything. It was my kid’s birthday — the only time in my life I’m going to get to see my child turn five — and I could barely stay in the room. It just sucked. Wretched, down. I’ve felt isolated in my marriage, utterly adrift as a parent, and completely inconsequential creatively. I keep fucking up like 10 different things at one time and even little things — I knocked over an open bottle of seltzer yesterday opening my laptop on one of the tables in back of Wegman’s; a beer bottle fell out of my cart in the liquor department as I was buying booze for The Pecan’s birthday party tomorrow; I dropped his ice cream cake the other night (fortunately it was okay) — make my brains fucking boil. I feel like I don’t have the capacity to handle as much is coming at me, and that’s before you get to the anxiety of a collapsing political order happening in real-time, my wife learning Hungarian as though I might do so through osmosis and somehow thereby be able to chase down EU citizenship through my family lineage. I feel like I should be granted a duel passport just by virtue of having to tell everyone I’ve ever met in my entire life how to pronounce my last name.

Anyway, Primus, some new Star Trek last night, good music throughout the week, a steady intake of THC and cheese, an unexpected gift that I’ll keep for the rest of my life, and I’m not sure I have any right to complain, but I do. It’s been a slaughter. I get up and want to fast-forward through the entire day and just go to bed. Just be done with it.

But that’s my shit and mine to deal with. In addition to the orthopaedist this morning, this afternoon is a parent-teacher conference — pretty light fare in pre-K, and we try to keep a close eye on how he’s doing anyway, so I don’t expect too many revelations, but still, you go — and then tomorrow is the big birthday party for the kid. Bounce house, pigs in blankets, The Patient Mrs.’ mom’s ziti; all the classics. We’re expecting about 40 people at various points in the afternoon, so if you want to come by, PM for the address.

New Gimme show today. 5pm. I know you don’t care or listen, but I’m lucky to do that stuff so I’m gonna keep plugging it anyhow. Thanks if you do check it out. It’s a good way for me to dig into more of the records that come in for review.

Next week, I don’t know, a bunch of stuff. Couple full streams, announcements, and so on. If I tell you it’ll be cool, will it matter? If you’re reading this now, will you come back because of the vague promise of something good? Probably not, I think. Maybe I’m getting too old for this shit; like a half-assed, lily white Danny Glover of the stoner rock blogosphere.

Have a great and safe weekend. Rest up, watch your head, enjoy. Thanks again for reading.

FRM.

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The Fragile came out on Sept. 21, 1999, as the third Nine Inch Nails album. I’ve owned it since that day and just not listening to it to write this piece I managed to hear a detail of light atonal guitar strumming at 2:47 into “The Day the World Went Away” that I’ve never heard before. Following the gripping pop-industrial-metal of 1994’s The Downward Spiral, which produced hits “Closer,” “March of the Pigs” and its subdued atmospheric finale “Hurt,” was no easy task and auteur/frontman Trent Reznor managed to change the entire scale and framework through which the band functioned. The Fragile is as cinematic as it is aggressive, petulant in its emotionalism at times but ferocious in its delivery — Reznor‘s line about being “Too fucked up to care anymore” in opener “Somewhat Damaged” echoes “Nothing can stop me down ‘cuz I don’t care anymore” from the prior album’s “Piggy” — and its scope was like nothing the band had done, topping an hour and 43 minutes and comprising two individual discs, ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, and 23 songs in its original incarnation. It is the kind of record that, 21 years after the fact, one might just put it on and hear something new even after listening to it enough times that it seems to run through the body at the same speed as one’s own blood.

Like most double-albums, it has material that could be easily cut for time. Some of The Fragile‘s instrumentals and experiments — beginning with “The Frail,” “Just Like You Imagined,” “La Mer” and the militaristic “Pilgrimage” on ‘Left’ and including “The Mark Has Been Made,” “Complication” and closer “Ripe [With Decay]” on ‘Right’ — might feel superfluous to a cruel editorial process, but they nonetheless serve a function in enhancing the atmosphere and underscoring the absolute all-in nature of the album itself. The rhythmic chains in “The Fragile,” the electronic zapping noises set to the rhythm of “Into the Void,” the drone that backs “I’m Looking Forward to Joining You Finally,” and the way the twisting melody of what might otherwise be a guitar solo in “Even Deeper” so perfectly suits the jazzy beat behind it; with all of these and so, so, so many more, The Fragile becomes an album of richness and detail unmatched by anything Nine Inch Nails did before or has done since. Reznor‘s work since has developed an ambient side and continued the style of hooks one finds manifest in The Fragile cuts like “The Wretched,” “We’re in This Together Now,” “The Fragile,” “Even Deeper,” “Into the Void,” “Where is Everybody,” “Please,” “Starfuckers Inc.” and “The Big Come Down” as much as those songs continued a thread from The Downward Spiral and the prior 1992 EP, Broken, and 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine. But The Fragile represents an intersection between perfectionism of craft and unmitigated mania of self-indulgence. The prior album was certainly the commercial breakthrough, but it’s The Fragile where Reznor demonstrates the truest reach of his project. Every tone, every sound, every second of it is considered.

That extends even to The Fragile‘s most cringe-worthy inclusion, which is unquestionably “Starfuckers Inc.,” which seems to be Reznor doing his best impression of then protege Marilyn Manson — who as I recall appeared in the video — and even with the would-be sexually transgressive lines, “And when I suck you off not a drop will go to waste/It really isn’t so bad once you get past the taste,” doesn’t say nearly as much as the phallus-as-weapon comment on masculinity in the prior album’s “Big Man with a Gun,” but being over-the-top with teen-angst-esque lashing out against the commercial ecosystem in which the album would inevitably reside is the point. The fact that “Starfuckers Inc.,” with its signature weighted-buzzsaw guitar chug and driving chorus, is one of The Fragile‘s catchiest songs — and that’s saying something — is not happenstance either. Like everything else around it, there’s a point being made, even if it’s more rudimentary-feeling than the spaces cast forth in “The Great Below” or “The Day the World Went Away” or some of the many transitional drones and elements that bring one song into the next throughout.

Neither is “Starfuckers Inc.” the only point of immediacy on The Fragile. “No, You Don’t” picks up from its atmospheric introduction to a straight-ahead riff and quick-arriving verse, and though it’s more mellow in its impact, “Even Deeper” is as effective as it is in no small part for its willingness to return to the chorus, likewise “We’re in This Together” and “The Fragile.” Between ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, the former proves the more structured and the latter more abstract at least in the general listening experience — true enough to “left-brained” and “right-brained” — but while The Fragile essentially reads are two distinct entireties, each with its purposeful beginning, middle and end, the time it spends flitting between different sounds and styles throws open the bounds of expectation, and Reznor and producer Alan Moulder execute and bring the material to bear with such a feeling of control that, in combination with the high grade songwriting on display — the fact that many of these tracks are still pop songs — the album remains accessible even to the moderately adventurous listener.

I’ll happily argue for The Fragile as the peak-era of Nine Inch Nails. It would be 2005 before the band returned with the strikingly toothless With Teeth, and proceeded into atmospheres and craft that, while interesting for someone operating at the level of attention Reznor invariably would receive, were largely void of innovation. Nothing lasts forever. And in that regard, it’s all the more fortunate that The Fragile is as long and as comprehensive as it is — an expanded edition showed up some years ago as well — since this glut of material represents a deep place of personal expression to which even Reznor has said he’s not willing to return. Fair enough. More than two decades on, The Fragile stands out not only from its era — to wit, it came out the same day as Type O Negative‘s World Coming Down — but from what would follow in its wake. It was the end of one century and the beginning of another, and The Fragile didn’t so much paint a vision of the future as it did reconcile the present with what was about to be.

I love this record. I hope you enjoy it too.

—

Blueberry picking in Manalapan? In the back of the car, The Pecan calling out the names of different trucks, mostly accurately, and narrating the drive. “Going this way. In the grey car. Cement mixer round and round!” He’ll be three in October. There was a time we were worried about his speech. That is less the case now.

So anyway, we’re on our way to Manalapan. To pick blueberries. I don’t eat them — too much sugar — but The Patient Mrs. and The Pecan will enjoy. We found fresh strawberries last Friday after going to Space Farms, so this feels like an appropriate follow-up. Elsewhere, and not that far away, people are dying. People are marching for long-overdue freedom. We are going to pick blueberries. It is important to remember the context in which one’s actions take place.

This week was hard. Not as hard as it would be if I had COVID-19. And not as hard as it would be if I was marching for long-overdue freedom. But hard. Living in my head with Bad Voice hard.

The Patient Mrs. and I discussed this week when we might go places together again. New Jersey is starting indoor dining next week, which seems absurd and dangerous to me. I said another two weeks at least to see how things shake out before, say, she goes to a grocery store. It’s been since March, so if she’s antsy to do a thing — anything — I get it. She leaves the house plenty but doesn’t see a ton of people, and she’s much more of an extrovert than I am. The Pecan being back in part-time daycare the last two weeks (they’re off this coming week) has eased the general tension level some, but I remain an impatient, miserable shit, so I expect basically to continue ruining whatever positivity might surround me at any given point, including that emanating from my beautiful wife and child.

A contaminant, then.

New Gimme Radio show today — they’ve started calling it Gimme Metal instead of Gimme Radio, presumably because they’re branching out — Gimme Country, etc. — and I guess that makes sense. But if Gimme Radio is the umbrella under which Gimme Metal resides, the show’s still on Gimme Radio. The Obelisk Show isn’t especially metal, most of the time. I don’t know. Maybe I need to listen to more metal.

Anyway, 5PM Eastern if you’re up for it. If you’re not, that’s fine too but don’t tell them I said that. Playlist is here. Listen here: http://gimmeradio.com

Nos habitant stultitia.

Great and safe weekend. Be careful. Be well. FRM.

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Yesterday, Queens of the Stone Age started the process of teasing the release of their next album by putting up a minute-long YouTube clip in which a manipulated version of frontman Josh Homme‘s voice said the word ‘gold’ over and over again. Today, they follow by announcing the title of their seventh full-length will be Villains and that to record it, the five-piece has teamed with producer Mark Ronson, whose credits include the pop-superstar likes of Paul McCartney, Amy Winehouse Adele, and many, many others who sell a lot, a lot, a lot of records to a lot, a lot, a lot of people. In the video below, among the other names, one will find Duran Duran. So there’s that.

Playing to mass-market pop is nothing new for Queens of the Stone Age, of course. 11 years after breaking through to mainstream consciousness with what’s now a heavy rock landmark in 2002’s Songs for the Deaf, the band issued their most recent outing, 2013’s …Like Clockwork (review here) — they also had two records in between in 2005’s Lullabies to Paralyze and 2007’s Era Vulgaris — and songs like “If I Had a Tail” and “Smooth Sailing” still don’t need much more than the recitation of the title to get stuck in the head of anyone who heard them. In announcing Villains in the skit below directed by Liam Lynch (Tenacious D) they give a snippet preview of a track called “Feet Don’t Fail Me” that would seem to work toward a similar danceability as the latter. Again, fair territory for them at this point.

More as I hear/see it. For now, here’s the clip and the band’s upcoming tour dates:

Queens of the Stone Age, Villains announcement

Directed by: Liam Lynch

Queens of the Stone Age on tour:
06/22-25 – Montebello, QC Amnesia Rockfest
07/13 – Auckland, NZ Logan Campbell
07/16 – Darwin, AU Convention Center
07/19 – Sydney, AU Horden Pavilion
07/20 – Melbourne, AU Festival Hall
07/22 – Byron Bay, AU Splendour in the Grass
07/28-30 – Naeba, JP Fuji Rock Festival
08/11-13 – San Francisco, CA Outside Lands Festival
09/15-17 – Chicago, IL Riot Fest

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