Tag Archives: Queens of the Stone Age

HEY COLOSSUS – My Name In Blood: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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JULY REWIND: QOTSA STORM WORTHY FARM, HEY COLOSSUS GET BLOODY, ZAMILSKA CHANNELS REZNOR

Right-o, where are we? July … no, it just left dammit, another sign of not getting any writing done. But before we scrape together a handful of ace new noises from the past couple of months, we can’t let Glastonbury go unmentioned, even at this late post-Worthy Farm hour, because 

Queens of the Stone Age: is this as good as live rock music gets?

Of course, it’s the TV version we’re talking about – no chance of actually being there – and even though the ever-expanding BBC TV/radio ubiquity of GLAS-TON-BERRRYYYY often easily grates, this year it didn’t. Seeing Glastonbury through the media means it’s very much a headliner-centric prism but, for rock fans of a certain vintage, the nostalgia-meets-car-crash potential of Guns N’ Roses was impossible to resist. Non-nostalgic sparks flew with, er, Sparks (sorry), Nova Twins, Working Men’s Club and more, but it was the Sunday night Other Stage headliner that promised a special moment.

One of our bands, in the big slot. And it feels like a big deal because although they’re obviously popular, there’s still something a little cult-y about QOTSA – something not quite mainstream. A little bit outside, singular, defiant.

In an interview with Mary Anne Hobbs for 6 Music, Josh Homme quipped that when it comes to Glastonbury, they get asked to do the slot no-one else wants. Last time, it was when Beyonce took the Pyramid Stage. This year, the small matter of Elton John’s Last Ever UK Show was the same-time competition.

The resulting gig was a badass statement in how to step up and own a festival gig. Apologies for the vacuous state of these few words, they don’t add up to a review and definitely offer zero news or insight. They’re just a fumbling attempt to express how exceptional QOTSA are live … a drilled unit with gang attitude who’ve got the chops to do exactly what they want. Stunning show, can’t get enough. Last year, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss turned in a spiritual set that touched on the divine. This year, Queens do the same but with devilish, high-energy relish.  

All of this means the QOTSA love-in continues round here, no doubt helped by the heat of In Times New Roman, but the occasional new sound still managed to creak on through. 

Shall we?

HEY COLOSSUS – My Name In Blood

Having only got two Hey Colossus albums meself – In Black and Gold and Happy Birthday – and not really getting on with the latter while bloody loving the former, we’ve got no choice but to dodge the Hey Colossus backstory and take this tune entirely on its own terms.

And those terms go something like this: sticky dank crawling spidery Slint-y trudgy hypnosis, all via the medium of RIFF. Never has an ascending sequence sounded less positive (disclaimer: I have no actual evidence for that) and those vulnerable shoegazer-esque vocals make a neat juxtaposition. Intricately, gothically doomy and very nearly uplifting, give it a shot and wallow in its dank.

MEMORIALS – Boudicaaa

Matthew Simms, guitarist in Wire. Verity Susman on vocals. Sprightly, catchy post-punk shapes that you might expect but given extra crunch you might not quite expect with an ultra-satisfying heavy low-end oomph that resolvethe main hook. Boudicaaa doesn’t last long and even then, Susman’s vocals disappear long before this already-short track fades away, making it less a song than a sketch that happens to be complete. Neat headbang and no excess. 

ZAMILSKA – Better Off

In trying to create something that captured the trip hop and heavier guitar sounds she listened to growing up, Polish electronica artist Zamilska has conjured a little magic here – a stark beat utilising Nine Inch Nails’ signature sonic decay and Massive Attack’s Mezzanine black-hole teetering. Whether Better Off is typical of Zamilska’s sound or a guitar-enhanced one-off, I don’t know, but it’s a darkly seductive electro strip. 

HEAVY LUNGS – All Gas No Brakes

Jerky shouting with a near-funk punk stab to match, All Gas No Brakes hits you like a rough, rowdy, non-digital guitar-band version of a Working Men’s Club track, an incessant one-note bass pulse that judders, lurches and agitates more than it grooves. Wakey wakey, losers. 

And there we go – a long overdue round-up, must try harder. 

‘til next time!

Northern Quarter, Mamchester
Manchester, Northern Quarter

BORIS & UNIFORM – You Are the Beginning: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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MAY REWIND: GODSPEED MAKES LIGHT, BORIS CUTS LOOSE AND TAMAR APHEK ROCKS HARD

Queens of the Stone Age have been on the playlist a fair bit these past few weeks. Must be the time of year. Or the appearance of new single Emotion Sickness and their fresh announcement as Glastonbury headliners. Or the Homme-sized wormhole started by a couple of top-drawer Kyuss reactions (NASTY!!! FLY!!!) from the groove-loving Lost in Vegas fellas Ryan and George. Or all of the above. Anyway, if Glastonbury is anything like their 2018 Finsbury Park show, QOTSA will surely win over the world.

Let’s start with a couple of typographic opposites. Just because, for one month only, we can.

First is the upper-case underscoring of ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT, aka Efrim Manuel Menucke and Ariel Engle, whose Waiting for the Light to Quit‘s drones-and-violin (is it?) shimmer teases a huge motorik explosion that never arrives, leaving you suspended in rays instead. Beautifully orchestrated, as you’d expect from a GY!BE/Silver Mt Zion spirit.

Second in this desperate, horribly contrived typo pairing is the lower-case/no-spaces charm of West Yorkshire favourites worriedaboutsatan. New album The Pivot takes a more varied detour from the consistently ambient/twilight electronica routes sometimes followed, and that’s mykindaworriedabouts – see the icy, metronomic pulse of Stop the Car for evidence. Go check The Pivot right here.

OK, a couple more awesome discoveries before we shut this dribbling tap of words OFF.

BORIS & UNIFORM – You Are The Beginning

Confession: after following them pretty devoutly for a few years in the noughties, I’ve dropped all Boris balls. Haven’t bought a new album of theirs since D.E.A.R. because that album continued a sequence that just didn’t quite land in the way that Feedbacker, Akuma No Uta, Altar, Smile and the like did. But this is part of the Boris trip because, as we know, there are very many Borises. It all depends which version(s) push your buttons.

Given all that, You Are The Beginning may well be the sound of a door re-opening – and if so, it’s a noisy, ripped-off-its-hinges door because this track starts like an uptempo kicker with harsh vocals and then loses its shit, winding up to a pummelling, chaotic clatter. Carnage from the neck up.

TAMAR APHEK – Crossbow

Primitive, repetitive bass and ultra-taut drums build the hyperactive motor behind Crossbow’s urgent, twitchy rhythm – until, that is, Tamar Aphek’s guitar howls voodoo across the joint. On this track she channels the free-thinking spirit of Savages and Fugazi, meaning space is the place – and it’s between the instruments. Not quite new, this tune and album came out in 2021 but it’s easily the most arresting new encounter from last week. And that’s why we’re talking about Crossbow.

’til next time!

Northern Quarter, Manchester
Manchester, Northern Quarter

ONE DAY AS A LION: One Day As A Lion

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DISTORTED AGITATION FROM DE LA ROCHA AND QOTSA DRUMMER
Given that the world has been spiralling to shit, you might have found yourself reaching for angrier music more often. I have. Music that’s got the gravitas, the provocation and the intellect to somehow document and deal with the insane wrong-ness of dumbfuck cops killing black people, and dumber-fuck ‘cenotaph protectors’ destroying Black Lives Matter protests in the false name of monument-al preservation. Dipshits and hackle raisers. No wonder Terrace Martin’s Pig Feet, wrapped and dropped within days of George Floyd’s killing, hits so hard. Pig Feet does not flinch.

Neither does Zack de la Rocha. His full-tilt delivery always captures these moments and even now, aged 50, he’s got the fury – check the explosive verse in Run The Jewels’ JU$T for evidence of that. His voice is the sound of a fight. But with Rage Against the Machine, it battles with another wild voice – Tom Morello’s guitar – and winds up less prominent in the rock orthodoxy of the RATM set up.

Maybe this is why he’s been such a serial collaborator since RATM last put a record out. Those guest slots put his voice up front, give it room, give it oxygen. They make his words flammable.

This is also true of the short-lived 2008 project with Jon Theodore, One Day As A Lion. As a primal drum-bass effort where the voice gets a 5-track vent, it’s way less Rock than Rage – got a raw urgency and a just-produced-enough attitude that’s clammy with rehearsal-room heat. Nothing arena-sized, no anthemic hooks, no guitar, just a very live-sounding gig stripped back to stiff rhythms and hard words. And with Theodore, ex Mars Volta and now Queens of the Stone Age, behind the kit, you know the drums are solid. His beats aren’t minimal, but neither are they fussy. They are, somehow, hip-hop friendly.

One Day As A Lion EP

Life beyond Rage

Wild International‘s petro-fumed groove is the mid-tempo starter that smoulders rather than explodes, like it’s on cruise control looking for a target. Downtuned bass riffs swell for the chorus, thick and sticky not liquid slick, and this track sets the vibe for the whole EP. The tempo (agitation?) picks up for Ocean View, Last Letter and One Day As A Lion, while If You Fear Dying locks onto the same spacious groove as Wild International. Other than that, you know roughly what you’ll get, track to track – unlike, say, Saul Williams’s self-titled conflict-zone masterpiece of hip hop, poetry, electronic, industrial and spoken word from 2004 (where Zack winds the tension on Act III Scene 2 [Shakespeare]).

One Day As A Lion don’t do genre hops and mood shifts. Their force is rough-edged, avant-ish primal rock with urban backbone and no, it wouldn’t hold your attention musically for a full album. But as an EP, as a righteous blast, it works ‘coz you get 20 uninterrupted minutes of de la Rocha flow, and this is the key point. As we know, he’s got that gift for making you BELIEVE – absolute conviction and persuasion every time, and right now we need that voice even if we didn’t know it. JU$T is the 2020 reminder. One Day As A Lion might be more curio than must-have, but as a non-Rage de la Rocha fix, it’s pure. The message remains the same

but now it’s 2020. FFS.

‘Time is coming
rising like the dawn of a red sun
If you fear dying
then you’re already dead’
(If You Fear Dying)

One Day as a Lion EP (ANTI-RECORDS, 2008)
Wild International
Ocean View
Last Letter
If You Fear Dying
One Day as a Lion

QOTSA + IGGY POP: live review

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QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE ALL-DAYER AT FINSBURY PARK, JUNE 30 2018. IGGY POP SECOND IN COMMAND

It’s a heatwave, it’s a scorching Saturday aft and there are complaints-worthy queues for the bars in Finsbury Park. Do you file in with a human snake for an hour to get yourself a sip o’ the shite stuff?

Or do you make sure you miss not one second of Iggy Pop?

You know the answer, and when Iggy skip-runs out, shirtless from the off, to I Wanna Be Your Dog, it’s confirmed. Screw lager, here is the Miracle of Pop. He’s lost speed, he limps badly and his muscle tone is much melted, but seeing him still giving it everything after a long life of feral performances and time-defying physicality is a life-affirming spectacle. And it is a pleasant shock to see him fired up like this in the lowering sun. The Post Pop Depression Live at the Albert Hall DVD – another captivating performance (is there any other?) – looked like it might have been a last-of-its-kind statement from Pop, the start of a move towards slightly more refined – or, at least, less physical – performances, but no. It’s like he can’t help himself. The momentarily mature Pop that peeped through PPD has been ditched for a return to the Stooges wild.

Gimme Danger is next up, and then: “If you saw somebody hitchiking … near Swindon … would you pick ’em up?” Cue The Passenger, then Lust for Life. He’s put the big-crowd guns out early, so what happens next? This is where it gets interesting, this is what it means to pull a great mass-appeal set out of your pants. Skull Ring. I’m Sick of You. TV Eye, Search and Destroy, Some Weird Sin, Mass Production …. who would have thought Mass Production on a day like this? It always sounds 10 times longer than it actually is, and crowd chatter does rise as it goes on, but you cannot ignore this crawling Idiot-grotesque factory dirge dragging the beauty out of a hot summer afterglow. But then, knowing he has to bring everyone back with the last track, he lets the Jean Genie out. Pop doesn’t mention Bowie, but surely everyone thinks Bowie, and while we do it’s Pop the Survivor who twists his body through a track that links them forever.

As far as tracklists for support slots go, it’s pretty hard to beat. As far as performances from still-got-it legends go … same. He looks strong – almost broken, but in the same gasp, nowhere near, with voice to match. We’ll never work it out, the guy’s still a phenomenon who you’ve got to watch as much as listen to. Pop time is show time. Again.

Queens of the Stone Age … are on ridiculous form. There’s no point teasing it out, they just are. Finsbury Park 2018 will surely be known as one of those gigs in a band’s lifetime where the cosmic forces got all their arses in line, and those who made it were lucky enough to witness something more than a bit special. It felt like they played for hours but finished in minutes. If I Had a Tail, Lost Art of Keeping a Secret and Feet Don’t Fail Me Now are early starters, and it’s clear the band are in a fearsome groove – pacy, heavy, clear and jammed with musicianship: a consummate rock gig and they never stop working it. Little Sister and Sick Sick Sick hit hard and lift high, but then again so does everything, the one exception being Make It Wit Chu’s seductive breather ahead of a SFTD one-two.

Song for the Deaf shuts the main set down. The encore is a 10-minute Song for the Dead, shit ye not. THAT’S how to finish off Finsbury – a hard rock orgy for 45,000. Do it all over again? If only we could. QOTSA albums on permanent replay ever since. Untouchable.

Queens of the Stone Age do Finsbury

QOTSA do Finsbury

PLANT CARRIES FIRE

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AUGUST REWIND: SPACESHIFTERS RETURN, A LOMBARDO-PATTON BEATDOWN, AND STETSO-SONIC METAL

ANY TIME NOW, said the robertplant.com homepage, May 2017.

Is it a Zep reunion? said the rock press, minutes later.

ffkkk?!?!?nnnrrrrrrrr…..

Talk about trying too hard to make something out of something else. NEVER GONNA HAPPEN, never was, let it be, make a note of the title of Zep II’s track two and apply it to pretty much any thought of a Zeppelin get-together. Robert Plant makes music – new music. Even when it’s a covers project, it’s fired by something new… band, genre, location, whatever, and the Zep stuff onstage is reworked with an earthly mystery. He follows the muse, man. Wanderlusting, collaborating, surrendering to music’s call, and now we learn there’s a new album – Carry Fire – on the way in October. Cannot wait (despite being priced out of the Bristol gig). Lead-off track The May Queen has a Bron-yr shuffle atop spaceshifter beats, echoing the ceaseless roar. What a voice.

Dead Cross

When Mike Patton guest presented Henry Rollins’s KCRW radio show the other week, of course they talked about Dead Cross. Patton said that when he got the call to ask if he wanted to sing, he had to think about it. Did he want to do a hardcore record? Could he do a hardcore record, pushing 50?

Check Seizure and Desist and get your answer: yes and yes. Hardcore to the power 11, short songs packed with structure, a proper singer doing screams with range AND Dave Lombardo pushing disbelief on our ears yet again. Dead Cross do not hold back. It’sDillinger Escape Plan manic – fitting, given Patton’s involvement – but thicker, fatter, heavier, and a lot of that’s gotta be the sticks. Lombardo Mindblow just has to be heard to be believed (Obedience School, Grave Slave), so whatever doubts Patton had about giving/taking a battering with Dead Cross, Lombardo must have had them as well. Or no? Anyway, get your h-core mojo strapped back on with 27-and-a-half minutes of no-WAAAAAY on Ipecac, and take a splintered pew at the Church of the Motherfuckers.

EX EYE

New track/new exposure of the month – Xenolith; The Anvil by EX EYE. Surging high-drama heavy prog instrumental, it’s ripe for Motorpsycho/Heliocentrics/Steven Wilson dabblers, perhaps not surprising when you find that EX EYE are Colin Stetson’s band. And the fact that they’re on Relapse Records tells you they’re not pissing about. Apocalyptic sax metal has landed.

Helpless

In the name of passing things on, the lovely Holy Roar record label sent out a link to a new video by Helpless – so here’s Sinkhole for you lot as well. It’s only a minute, it’s not polite. Dare you?

BACKTRACKS

Most of the time we’re not listening to new stuff, so what about those nuggets and deeper cuts that burrow down the e-hole from the many other albums we’ve got on a loop? Here are a couple that have wormed in this past month – see if they do the same for you.

Prince: Ain’t About 2 Stop

“If life is a B-side, my dream is the A” – throbbing right-now production on this HITnRUN Phase One hard hitter: groping cyborg beats, dense-dense-dense, and a semi solo as only Prince can do … you won’t find it on y’tube, though. Sorry.

Harvey Milk: Goodbye Blues

Non-immediate gratification. The anti-now, the slowest burn, the non-instant. They make you wait, this lot, bellowing like a beast in death throes, but you KNOW it’s worth it. Propping up the back end of Life….the Best Game in Town, Goodbye Blues slows your mind before bursting it with a Manic Depression-style triple-time pick-up, and a punishingly heroic solo to end.

Queens of the Stone Age: Suture up your Future

With Villains emerging, there’s been plenty of reason to seek out some Queens previous, and this light-footed swinger from Era Vulgaris is addictive. Sea-drifting melancholy and hazy shimmer, ending in chaos. The sound of life being let go? Maybe the words tell all. What do you think?

’til next time!

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind