Queens of the Stone AgeEra Vulgaris(Interscope)US release date: 12 June 2007UK release date: Available as importby Jennifer Kelly Email Print Write to the editor Big rock at its bestQueens of the Stone Age have always occupied an unusual position in the music industry, a sort of throwback to the days when huge, arena-filling bands could actually have some merit. The title “biggest band in the world” doesn’t mean as much nowadays with file-trading taking the place of radio and major labels imploding from their own inner rot. The audience has splintered. Expectations are low. Product is disposable. The days when #1 albums were possible future classics, and when everybody knew the riffs from the last Led Zeppelin or Guns ‘N Roses or even Nirvana record are long gone. As a result, it’s almost an anomaly that a band as good as Queens of the Stone Age can exist on a large scale. And more than that, it’s downright weird that Queens of the Stone Age can continue to push the edges a little, not just churning out the kind of storm and drone people expect of them. Josh Homme can take his big label bucks and plow them into interesting side projects like the Desert Sessions series and Eagles of Death Metal. He can make even his main project a little more complicated and conflicted than the core fan base might demand… and he can somehow slip all that past the suits with a wink and a nod. You have to be smart to rock the football stadiums, but still keep the music interesting enough to care about. You have to stay on your guard. No wonder half the songs on Era Vulgaris, the band’s fifth full-length, are about falsity, selling-out, and game-playing. But not to worry, the other half are about debauchery—sex, drugs, rocking out. It may be a game, but the prizes are worth having. Era Vulgaris then, is everything you’d want from a hard rock album, blistering beats, abrasive guitar riffs, sexually-charged croons and anthemic rock choruses, but it’s also a trippy dive into psychedelia, a caustic commentary on greed, and, on one track, a Neil Young-esque bluesy come-on that could launch a thousand slow dances. It’s a little slicker and more pop-oriented than R or Songs for the Deaf, a little more focused than Lullabies. The two elements of QOTSA’s sound, the brutal riffage and the high chilled-out vocals, combine in various permutations here: the rock coming to the forefront in singles “Sick Sick Sick” and “3s and 7s”; the more delicate side of the band emerging in the spooky “Into the Hollow” and “Suture Up Your Future”. (More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/41966/queens-of-the-stone-age-era-vulgaris/ )Stream the whole album here:http://www.qotsa.com/