Home  Reviews Album Queens of the Stone Age - Lullabies to Paralyze
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Queens of the Stone Age - Lullabies to Paralyze |
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Written by Drew
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Saturday, 14 May 2005 |
It has been a long strange road for Queens of the Stone Age. There are few other bands that have the credibility, the mainstream exposure, and the desire, the need, to rock as hard as Queens of the Stone Age. However, with mainstream succsess come certain responsibilities, rules even. The good ol' days of obscurity are gone. The dispute bewteen founding members Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri, that resulted in Oliveri's departure from the band, it seemed maybe the wheels had come off, maybe the pressure of success was too much. Yet, Homme remains determined to keep Queens alive with the release of Lullabies to Paralyze. Can Homme continue to walk that fine line of success with credibility or will he self-destruct or mellow out?
The revolving door line up of Queens of the Stone Age and Kyuss, the group Queens evolved from, reads like a who's who of rock and roll of the last fifteen years. Thankfully, Homme has brought back a number of familiar faces for the new record. Just to name a few of the contributors, Mark Lanegan is back, Shirley Manson helps out on one track, Joey Castillo drums, and Alain Johannes picks up the bass and just about anything else he can find laying around the studio.
I was shocked the first time I heard the opening track, This "Lullaby", a slow and dark Lanegan track, which sounds exactly like it belongs on a Lanegan record. Certainly it is not a sound unfamiliar to any Lanegan fan, but on a Queens record?
All doubts about the health of Queens of the Stone Age are erased with the second track, "Medication", a quick Rated R esque stoner rock tune that the Queens are known for. "Medication" could have easily fit on either of the last two Queens records. That isn't to say that there is no experimentation on Lullabies. "Everybody Knows that You Are Insane" starts out a meandering psydellic tune until it breaks into the familiar manic Queens style, and "I Never Came" is one of the more mellow Queens songs, but teases with an absolutely addictive little guitar riff. "You Got a Killer Scene There Man..." features Shirley Manson and is strangely reminiscent of The Mark Lanegan Band's last record featuring PJ Harvey...with plenty of Queens sludge/stoner rock flavor of course.
To me Lullabies feels like a mature Rated R. The "wall of sound" from Songs for the Deaf isn't really felt on Lullabies, except for a couple of exceptions, one of which is "Someone's in the Wolf", a track that hits with the kind of impact as "A Song for the Deaf". The result is a cleaner, more crisp sounding record. There isn't really a "Monsters in the Parasol" or "Auto Pilot" on this record, but there is plenty of craziness muddled with a jaded sort of maturity.
In the end, Lullabies to Paralyze is simply just another brilliant Queens record. It's insane hard rock that just sinks in and goes down easy. This record will do as nicely in a car cd player as it will at a drunken house party as it will at home alone.
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