The GB Album Club 029 - Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age

Duders! Welcome to the 29th edition of the Unofficial Giant Bomb Album Club! Last week, we gave up (*checks list*) our cash, our houses, our phones, and our lives with Adam Freeland's Now & Them. This week, we reclaim our autonomy on our drive through California and we rock the fuck out with Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age! This album was picked by our good friend @thatpinguino, and you can listen with links the below:

Spotify

Apple Music

Youtube

The Unofficial Giant Bomb Album Club! We decided on the theme of Artists You Discovered in Video Game Soundtracks and made a pool of albums from which we pick an album every week at random to listen to and discuss! If you've got something that fits the theme, head on down to our Discord and submit it!

QotSA music good! Mark Lanegan and Dave Grohl good! Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri bad!

I love this album, but I think it might be my third favorite of theirs behind Rated R and …Like Clockwork. It’s 100% the first album I would turn a new listener towards, though.

we play the songs that sound more like everyone else than anyone else

KLON Klone Radio

its songs for the deaf, you cant even hear it!

@allthedinos: Going to write my thoughts a little later, but this is indeed my first time listening to a QotSA album.

This is a fine one (good starter) but I prefer Rated R and Lullabies to Paralyze a bit more.

Also as I've gotten older it's been harder to reconcile with how much Josh Homme (allegedly) sucks especially after I started listening to more Kyuss.

I thought I was going to be that guy, but two other people have already said they like Rated R better. That said, this is a really good album, but it doesn't quite keep me for every song. Mosquito Song is one of my top 3 QOTSA songs, though, and all the singles are great. I also like Gonna Leave You and Do It Again.

Alain and Natasha are the most underrated portion of this musical family tree.

(Acknowledgment up front: Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri both suck shit.)

This is my first Queens of the Stone Age album. They are, or were, one of the biggest rock blindspots for me. Songs for the Deaf and Rated R came out when I was in middle and lower school respectively, and ...Like Clockwork came out during a weird period where I was barely paying attention to new music. (I was interning at this place and it was a whole thing.) I do have bigger rock blindspots, one of which will come up later in this Album Club cycle. But this was a pretty big one.

And yeah, the hype is well deserved!

First and foremost, I've actually heard a lot of these songs. Mainly "Millionaire" on the THUG 1 soundtrack (so I could've picked this album if I wanted to) and "No One Knows" from who knows how many commercials and stuff, as well as some of the other songs. So it was a nice surprise to have all those.

As far as actual substantive points, there's a lot I could say, but those of you who've spent more time with the band probably know all the fine points already. But what I think I like about this album the most, and I mean this in the best way possible, is how back to basics it is. Or more accurately, how it takes the basics and turns them all up to a billion. It's an album that understands what a killer riff is and what a killer riff has been, and it takes that knowledge to make the most killer riffs in the history of killer riffs. (I'm exaggerating, but hopefully you get my point.) If the goal was to make the loudest most rock ass album they could, everyone seems to have more than understood the assignment. We get fewer and fewer of rock albums like this lately.

So yeah, I'll be checking out those albums for sure. Love it when an album turns out to not be overrated.

Favorite Songs: "You Think I Ain't Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire," "First It Giveth," "The Sky is Fallin'"

@unclejam23: Well said on the rock-ass rock album part. I think that’s exactly what they were going for, and it was executed near-perfectly. I think the only reason I call it my third favorite is that it’s a few songs too long. I like them all, but “Do It Again” and “God Is in The Radio” drag a little bit for me. The first 5ish tracks though… ridiculously good.

If you haven’t listened to any others yet, I would probably recommend Lullabies to Paralyze next, mostly to see how they followed up Songs for the Deaf. It’s not one of my favorites, but it has some incredible songs and a much different vibe. I like the robot rock sound of Era Vulgaris a lot, but I would save that for after Rated R and …Like Clockwork. The only album I’ve felt is middling is Villains, which wastes Jon Theodore on drums, but has a few really good tracks. Lastly, my favorite non-album track is “The Fun Machine Took A Shit and Died”.

@allthedinos: Era Vulgaris is definitely a step below some of the other albums, but Rock Band made me love "3's & 7's". That song goes hard.

@allthedinos: Going to step away from QotSA until the memory of Songs for the Deaf fades a little then do whichever one I listen to next (probably Rated R for chronology's sake). That way I'm not making as immediate a comparison. But yeah, looking forward to it despite various band members sucking!

I'm surprised how much I enjoyed this. There was something about QotSA that put me off them back in the day. Maybe it's the fact Josh Homme always looked like a twat (a reputation he's done well to back up over the years) and I always felt like Kyuss were just the better band. It doesn't help that the singles got played to death on release. Anyway, Songs for the Deaf is just an absolutely crafted work of art. Rock as fuck and cohesive in a way I didn't think they were capable of.

This might open me up to the rest of the catalogue.