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77. Villains - Queens of the Stone Age (2017)

Rock

Josh Homme has made a point of never allowing Queens of the Stone Age to repeat itself. He’s encouraged bandmates and frequent collaborators to cultivate a diversity of ideas throughout the writing and recording processes for each of the band’s previous works. This avoidance of stasis has largely contributed to their continued success over the course of the past 20 years. Villains was, admittedly, the first time that strategy ever gave me pause.

The band enlisted Mark Ronson, a Grammy-winner whose primary realm of expertise has been pop, to handle production for the album and inducing nervous laughter amongst the fan base. Obviously determined to take things in a dancier direction than previous albums, the band and Ronson made the decision to, um, castrate the guitars on the album, resulting in a weird, uncomfortable mono quality. It felt like someone had snipped the balls off the album and somehow no one involved seemed to care. I couldn’t understand it. But, because it’s Queens of the Stone Age, I left the album on repeat for a while and let myself acclimate to the kazoos, I mean the guitars. Against all odds, they grew on me.

Inevitably, it became obvious that the album is every bit as deep and heavy as their previous work. It harvests those qualities from well-placed forays into vintage Queens, like the careening, zero-fucks-given outros to “The Evil Has Landed” and “Villains of Circumstance”. The rest is ironically delivered by the chintziness, which functions as a sarcastic thread throughout, well aware of itself and actually a cover, beneath which the album explores new frontiers.

“Feet Don’t Fail Me” follows the trend set by “Keep Your Eyes Peeled” on 2013’s “Like Clockwork…” of painstakingly building momentum over the course of an extended intro to the album before crashing headlong into the meat of the opening track. “Domesticated Animals” finds Homme flexing his maniacal and whip-smart sense of humor. Not every track is a home run, especially “Fortress”, which just feels like filler, but overall Villains is rock-solid that both requires, and massively rewards, your patience.

*image; cover art for the album Villains by the artist Queens of the Stone Age