Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork

"So good to be an ant who crawls atop a spinning rock," sings Josh Homme halfway through QOTSA's newest album. But if Mr. Homme is an ant, I don't even want to know what that makes the rest of us. Josh Homme has been churning out hard-hitting, face melting, guitar-heavy rock albums for longer than I've been alive. He's been with Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal, Them Crooked Vultures, and he even produced an Arctic Monkeys record. The scary thing is that everything he does is awesome. Sure, these bands don't venture far out of the world of "rock music," but it's amazing how these bands manage to be diverse and interesting on their own.

So now we have ...Like Clockwork, released half a year ago, and it's fantastic. Everywhere that Queens of the Stone Age has left me feeling unsatisfied in the past has been completely corrected. Where other QOTSA albums could get a little too hazy, ...Like Clockwork keeps things up front almost all the way through. There's a good hook in almost every song and licks and tricks are flying all over the place. If I had a dollar for every good guitar solo on this album, I'd have enough money to go out and buy QOTSA's next record. Even more in-your-face are Josh Homme's vocals. Like a big muscular siren, he draws listeners in with his smooth voice and kills them with lines like "I blow my load over the status quo." Even at the vulnerable moments, QOTSA sounds fearless. Josh Homme's intro in "The Vampyre of Time and Memories," a pretty base composition of piano and vocals, still manages to demand attention before growing into a new-age rock ballad. 

Sure, it's nothing genre-changing, and mainstream rock music still probably sucks as a whole (I haven't checked in awhile), but ...Like Clockwork makes me thankful that Josh Homme is still trying to be interesting with the vocal, guitar, bass, drum set-up. So let's take the time to thank QOTSA for validating the "rock band" in 2013 by picking up an instrument and jamming. Good luck with finals, everybody. You are all awesome!

Check out the video for "My God is the Sun," with a giant winged skull shooting laser-beams from its mouth.

- Kane