Queens Of The Stone Age
Songs For The Deaf

But is rock really dead?
Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, if some of you think so, in my humble opinion, you are mistaken. It's true, rock as it once was is no longer, and we'll never see it again; but perhaps that's fair, because everything in life evolves, and when it comes to artistic currents, there can be many evolutions, all different, all in search, not necessarily experimental but sometimes physiological, of a new archetype, which in turn is constantly evolving. That's perhaps what has happened to rock: it has frayed, and its path has diverted onto other routes; and one of these routes is undoubtedly stoner rock, the path taken by the album in question, 'Songs For The Deaf', the third work by Queens Of The Stone Age, dating back to 2002.

An all-around stoner album: tracks with rough and dirty sounds, where bass and drums work hard to keep the rhythm constantly high, providing a heavy backdrop, sometimes compellingly repetitive, sometimes varied and enriched by brief but striking guitar solos, sometimes surprisingly cut off abruptly only to start back stronger than before, like in the crazy driving vortex of "A Song For The Dead" where the slow and dragged voice introduces us to a noisy and reckless dance that seems never-ending; a music that makes the mind sweat, keeping it busy, preventing thoughts from flowing normally.
Songs come one after another in an unbroken succession of often distorted notes accompanying bare, essential lyrics: never long reasonings, never streams of words, just a few simple phrases, pronounced slowly and placidly, yet carrying an immense load of anger, resentment, and more ("...I can go with the flow, but don’t say it doesn’t matter anymore..."); it's almost chilling to consider the false calm with which Josh Homme announces that the sky is falling ("The Sky Is Fallin'"). Or we have equally simple phrases but shouted out loud, like in the first track of the album, an intro placed there precisely to immediately convey what one is in for when listening to 'Songs For The Deaf': flawless, organic, capturing attention from the first listen, leaving only a few brief and insignificant moments of respite. The entire album, from beginning to end, is like a great, immense pleasant effort, almost a lengthy musical earthquake inexplicably capable of causing anxiety, but also of relaxing, and once finished, it leaves open questions, a concealed curiosity, like the sensation of having overlooked something important, not having found the right key to interpretation, and that the deeper meaning still lies there, in the bare and dusty universe that 'Songs For The Deaf' has painted in our heads, challenging us to listen again. But a rock album doesn’t necessarily need explanations, nor does it propose to offer any, in my opinion: we never speak of absolute truths, only truths shot out as they exist in the artist’s brain; transient ideas and sensations that are never denied and, if we may use an expression that doesn't do them justice, often remain, in themselves, an end in themselves; that some rock masterpieces have marked eras, that’s another matter.
'Songs For The Deaf' is an album of this kind: it doesn’t aim to reveal the meaning of life, nothing transcendental; it’s designed to convey certain sensations, to arouse doubts, always giving space, as is right and inevitable, to the most varied and subjective interpretations.

And this is rock, according to me.