| August 2002 - Eye Magazine: Songs for the Deaf review
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by SB |
Those of us still scraping up our brains from the
Lee's Palace floor after getting our heads blown off
at the Queens' visit this past June -- one bass-kick
from guest drummer Dave Grohl was all it really took
to get the grey matter splattering -- may not find the
Queens' third album as lobotomizing; for a band that
leans so heavily on the bottom end, Grohl's drums
sound oddly compressed here. But for everyone else,
Songs for the Deaf is still a most formidable
mindfuck. Once again, the Queens treat rock like lava
in a lamp -- but we're not talking stoner connotations
as much as amorphous qualities, as the Queens melt
down the metal into new-wave power-pop ("No One
Knows"), '60s psych-mod ("Another Love Song") and
spaghetti western ("Mosquito Song") forms, though
unlike 2000's schizoid Rated R, the genre jumps feel
more like logical evolutions than practical jokes.
Still, no matter how much Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri
broaden their songwriting scope, there's no denying
what they do best: mutant sludge-metal colossi -- like
"Song for the Dead," a nauseous mauling of Hendrix's
"Foxy Lady" riff -- that induce involuntary bowel
movements on impact.
Four stars
go back
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