As members of Kyuss, Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri had rooted around in the depths of blues rock so dirty and growling, Tom Waits would be proud. They’d also won a huge cult following and following the band’s split, they indulged in various projects apart which pleased the converted but went largely unnoticed

Reunited as Queens Of The Stone Age, this first self titled album went very much the same way at the time of release. Available now as one of those cut price jobs in your local megastore, it remains a hidden gem which the lucky or dedicated manage to find. It’s incredible that this is the case as on one listen it fits logically into the trilogy of albums they have made under the QOTSA monicker and indeed is frequently preferred by fans over the supreme bounce of ‘Rated R’.

It’s a primitive album, the beginnings of the ‘stoner rock’ which the mainstream press likes to categorise them under, but instead of bouncing like Rated R or grinding in deep like ‘Songs For The Deaf’, it seems to… levitate. It’s rough as hell, but glides along and takes you with it, seeping into you.

‘Regular John’, still in their live set and regularly drawn out to 10 minutes plus (it seemed like 20 at Reading in 2001, the band were so trashed they seemed to lose track and keep going in case that last minute in fact wasn’t the first, as they quite possibly thought it was.…… you get the impression). It runs along on a four note, dischordant riff which was guaranteed to win me over from the start. Dischordant, incidentally, has to be one of the greatest words you can apply to a great album (as I do often, if not always) and the greatest bands pull it off brilliantly with the listener even realising that what they’re hearing should be — and probably is — one hell of a bastard noise.

QOTSA excel in this, ready to fall apart at the seams at any moment but resolutely thriving off chaos. ‘Walkin’ on the sidewalks’ is another great example, Nick pumping on his bass as Josh runs amok with his guitar, before letting the song be drawn along by Nick again, the fuzz off his amp fizzing in the background. Shamelessly primal. Lo-fi is the key here — How to Handle a Rope crackles into life and bludgeons with bass guitar & drums well up in the foreground, Josh’s vocals buried way back. Most modern bassists merge into the background, but again and again Nick leads the band — the classic Mexicola feeds off his dirty, grinding, shit-storm playing. The Lead guitar is almost secondary, but Josh is well up to the case — Give The Mule What he Wants is almost entirely Nick’s song and you almost think he’s going to steal the album away without breathing a word, but Josh proves it’s equal collaboration — beautifully simple and basic guitar when it needs to be simple. 

Then the album ends in ansaphone messages, an electronic freak out and what you presume is the sound of someone taking a piss. The metaphor, if there is one, is definitely ironic. It’s egoless, thrilling, trashed but brilliantly clear — the first stage in what is one of the great album trilogies.