The Kings

I’ve had a week with the new Queens of the Stone Age album Villians and it is truly a monster. It is the best album of 2017. There’s hardly a reason for anyone to release anything else. It should win every award.

Dense, lush, intense. Lots of melodies and harmonies and multi-layered interplay between guitars and bass and vocals and keys and synths (not a bad thing). Soaring and singing, melodic dissonance.

All the songs are good. Most are great. Most are long. This is an album to be taken seriously, to be consumed in its entirety. Over and over again.

Gene presented The Pillows a few weeks ago and asked, “if not this band, then who?” I will say, for me, it’s the Queens. They are leaps and bounds ahead of any other new music being made today. They would stand their ground in any era. Josh Homme is a musical genius.

This is my favorite song, for now at least. It’s a good sample of what makes the Queens so special, although most other songs on the album aren’t far behind. Pay particular attention to when the main riff sneaks back in (via synth), after the stoopid punk rock part kicks in.

Thank goodness there’s something that rises above the cesspool that is today’s music.

3 thoughts on “The Kings

  1. The end part is right up my alley. The beginning and middle would fit right in on Houses of the Holy. I like it. I heard a “look out” in there. You told the singer to say that, or you knew he would, or something like that.

    • It’s a known fact that the utterance of “look out” in any rock song increases the song’s quality by an automatic 10 percent. As a songwriter, you should make note of this.

  2. LOL. Genius. Yeah, Josh is to music what Steven Hawking is to math. Give me a break.

    I actually like some Homme stuff (we cover San Berdoo) but this is just more boring shit to me. No better than Crooked Vultures as far as interesting or clever or creative in my view. Just a bunch of very good musicians performing a bunch of average songs.

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