QUEENS or THE STONEAGE
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If Queens of the Stone Age were a cartoon character, they’d be Bender from Futurama: a hugely complex work of technical wizardry who is a law unto himself, who has earned legendary status through an alley cat-style moral outlook to booze, drugs, ladies and general high livin‘.
For four albums Joshua Homme (yes. he's Joshua now, apparently) and an unwholesome variety of oddballs have honed their noxious notion of robot rock and there remain few to touch them. Lullabies to Paralyse continues that
awesome trend.
The album is a see-saw affair which struggles under the weight of following two of the finest rock records of the last 20 years: 2000‘s Rated R and 2002‘s Songs for the Deaf. It has neither the wit and eclecticism of the former, nor the cunning
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and weight of the latter but still Homme manages
to come up smiling.
The departure of his bass playing sidekick Nick Oliveri has had less effect than one might expect as Homme was always alpha male. The blues groove that keeps them head and shoulders above the chugging rock herds remains fluid and bold while Homme‘s deliberate lack of showiness on the guitar is to be commended. His bloody mindedness when it comes to his incessant. trance-like riffing is bordering on hilarious: just when you think there‘s respite. he keeps drilling you for another four bars. He counterbalances this with periods of unashamed crooning and choruses as wide as the Clyde. The Richard Marx of indie metal he is not. Well, not yet anyway.
Lullabies is truly inspired in places and while it isn‘t as cohesive as its predecessors. Queens of the Stone Age still sound like no one but themselves. And that‘s as much as anyone could aspire to. (Mark Robertson)
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