...Like Clockwork
Genre: Desert Rock
This feels great to say...Queens of the Stone Age are BACK! After a six-year hiatus, Josh Homme and crew have returned to deliver one of the best alt-rock albums in over a decade (probably since their own Songs for the Deaf in 2002). ...Like Clockwork is tightly written and executed, despite a list of guest stars that reads like a fanboy's wet dream: Trent Reznor, Dave Grohl, Alex Turner, Jake Shears, and the self-described "actual queen from the stone age" Elton John. The songs here are dark, heavy, and better than anything the band has done since Songs, apart from maybe "Little Sister" and "Misfit Love" off 2005's Lullabies to Paralyze and 2007's Era Vulgaris respectively, both of which had good tunes, but weren't particularly good albums. Lullabies had hit-makers, but became bogged down by experimental sludge at the end. Vulgaris was faster, but became too obsessed with blasting you at full volume in the hopes it could loud it's way to the top of the charts.
Clockwork however, is perfect; the songs are each great in their own right, but together they form a mesmerizing, beautiful whole. Sure, you can pull favorites, "I Sat by the Ocean" and "My God Is the Sun" are classic QOTSA, along with heart-stopping "I Appear Missing," which washes the album in a bath of noise before the title-track closer. The absolute highlight, as I'm sure you'll read everywhere, is "If I Had a Tail," a creepy, metal ode to the creatures of the night that Homme so desperately wants to join. I would say this is the best thing Queens has ever done, but only because it's a completely different sound from the one pioneered on Rated R and Songs so long ago. It's like two different bands competing through time: one has the best metal album of the millennium, one has the best stoner rock album of the millennium. It's up to you to decide which one is which.
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