As life is, so is music. The new album by the rock band Queens of the Stone Age is so good that it is almost unfair to speak of it using clichés.
However, worn-out superlatives fit this dark, personal masterpiece very well. Queens of the Stone Age are not usually like this, especially not to such an extent. This is a band that brought the world ‘Go with the Flow’, ‘No One Knows’, and ‘Feel Good Hit of the Summer’ – very good songs on excellent albums, but which could never be described as personal or particularly deep.
The inspiration for ‘…Like Clockwork’ came to singer and guitarist Josh Homme while he was immobile and helpless, lying in bed for four months after a routine knee surgery went wrong and threatened his life. After pulling himself out of a depressive phase, he began to think about essential things, his own mortality, friendships, life, and faith, and picked up the guitar. As it happens with great musicians, the result of this entire ordeal is the best rock music Homme has ever created, starting with ‘The Vampyre of Time and Memory’, a song whose title (along with the album cover) misleadingly suggests some kind of rock ballad in the style of The Smashing Pumpkins, in which Homme confronts his hospital experience.
mn: Uncompromising!
Homme was evidently uncompromising in his vision while creating the album, so much so that he fired long-time drummer Joey Castillo and replaced him with Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters. Although such changes usually indicate trouble, ‘Smooth Sailing’, ‘If I Had a Tail’, ‘My God Is the Sun’, or ‘I Appear Missing’ are sincere songs about human fears that succeeded in their intent without Queens of the Stone Age sacrificing the guitar riffs and heavy rock sound for which they are known.
