- Artist
- Queens Of The Stone Age
- Label
- Polydor
- Release date
- 11th June 2007
- Genre
- Rock
Return to filthy form from hard as nails desert rats on fourth album of intriguing but venomous industrial strength rock
The sneers that have sometimes greeted Queens Of The Stone Age becoming a hard rock band that charts are mystifying – finding the rightful heirs to Nirvana's throne is surely a good thing, right? As Kurt Cobain knew, melody, interesting arrangements and imagination do not negate your edge and QOTSA leader Josh Homme is not a man to be messed with.
This fourth studio album oozes fire and ambition, from the Cream vs Led Zeppelin punch-up that is album opener Turnin' On The Screw to the soul-y, Sly Stone-style strut of Make It Wit Chu. Contrastingly, the hooligan metal charge moments are as nails as anything they've unleashed before: Sick Sick Sick, Battery Acid and Run Pig Run (check those titles!) all crunch, slam and grind like no other band around. As ever, Homme's disarmingly mild vocals melded to such thunderous rock mean an air of sex pervades Era Vulgaris – albeit abandoned, orgiastic sex as the gates of hell open. Brooding, venomous and dangerous, Era Vulgaris is a guilty pleasure in the truest sense.
More to try: Black Sabbath: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath The White Stripes: Icky Thump (out 18th June 2007) Nirvana: In Utero Queens Of The Stone Age: Songs For The Deaf
