Everyone needs a mantra. For Josh Homme, Nick Oliveri, and the rotating cast of Queens of the Stone Age, it was short, catchy, debauched: "Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy, and alcohol." And for good measure: "C-c-c-c-c-cocaine." Over and over again. Sixteen times. For the first song on their second album it was a rallying cry, the perfect chorus, a clever verse, and a sort of philosophical exposition. But it was also a misnomer.
Rated R was tagged as stoner rock almost immediately upon release in 2000, in part because of those seven substances, but mostly because the band rose from the ashes of early-1990s Palm Desert sun gods Kyuss. Homme, a plangent, riff-obsessed guitarist, and Oliveri, a manic golem of a man and a mighty bass player, formed the backbone of that band with a mechanized sense of bang-and-smash structure. Studied repetition and precision are unlikely virtues for weedheads, but then these are unlikely musicians. When Homme formed the Queens after Kyuss disbanded, he carried that sense of exacting musculature with him but also brought a surprisingly seductive croon-- able to burrow low and also swing high into falsetto. After a modest, chugging self-titled debut, his frantic pal Oliveri joined the band.
What they forged was familiar but also wildly different from that stoner rock-- a term Homme has always rejected. In turn, they made one of the last great modern hard rock records and something deceptively tuneful, groove-bitten, and even melancholic. As soon as the mantra is laid bare, QOTSA begin to dance away, with things like "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret", which amounts to a really great Blue Öyster Cult song, and the funk stroll of "Leg of Lamb". Suddenly a pattern, from mellow grace notes to head-smash riffs, sometimes colliding into each other, begins to set in.
Homme has never been much of a lyricist, preferring to weave in fragments of thought and word puzzles. Rated R is rarely about things, more often about feelings-- a chest-beating energy, a confusing head trip, or a dissipating sadness. Former Screaming Trees frontman and longtime Homme buddy Mark Lanegan began his relationship with the band on "In the Fade", an intoxicating and solemn song that has gone a bit unnoticed as the years have passed. Lanegan eventually became a full-time member of the band, but he was never better than the first time. When the song concludes, a reprise of the mantra kicks back in, a fitful reminder to shake the melodrama and remember the cocaine.
Ten years later, Rated R sounds vital, if a bit unusual. Credible hard rock is a tough sell these days. It's been three years since Queens released their last album, Era Vulgaris, and six years since Homme fired his old friend Oliveri-- a notorious party monster who consumed with vigor and often performed in the nude, his bass strapped across his crotch like a phallic totem. They grew bigger, recruiting Dave Grohl to play drummer and writing more riff beasts, but they've never been as fearless. To celebrate the decade since, the band has included the perfunctory bonus disc, with seven B-sides, including a goofy cover the Kinks' "Who'll Be the Next in Line", an even sillier Carly Simon parody called "You're So Vague", and a surprisingly sly take on Romeo Void's new wave classic, "Never Say Never". They've also tacked on a nine-song live set from the 2000 Reading Festival that features Homme hilariously saying, "This is a song for you," to the audience before four consecutive songs. Stoners.
But it's the unlikely things about Rated R that stick with you: The bongos that open "Better Living Through Chemistry"; Lanegan's existential wail on "In the Fade"; Rob Halford's backing vocals on "Feel Good Hit of the Summer". The gentle, acoustic interlude "Lightning Song" feels like a cold splash of sea water after Oliveri's scorched-earth demon screech on "Tension Head". There are no down or off moments here. "I Think I Lost My Headache" closes things with a squealing three-minute brass outro; it's a typically unexpected move from a band making a surprising leap. Rated R didn't defy convention because it didn't seem to have a working text. Only a mantra.
