The signature sound of Queens of the Stone Age was only made possible through an unusual process of elimination. The group lost its truly wild side, and any traces of punk and metal, following the justifiable dismissal of bassist Nick Oliveri and after Dave Grohl wrapped up his brief tenure as their full-time drummer. Mark Lanegan took away the bluesy gravitas when he departed the band and this mortal coil.
As a result, the music of Josh Homme and co. was reduced down to a viscous cocktail of darkwave pop, boogie rock, and glam that has kept them in good stead for the better part of a decade. And it’s instantly recognizable. It takes as little as the first few seconds of “Obscenery,” the first track on their new album In Times New Roman… to clock the album as a QOTSA effort. The guitar that’s been processed to sound like alien weapons or industrial machinery. The splashy yet stiff drum tone. The dry, airless production. There is surely a less fraught adjective to use for their music, but the only one that fits is formulaic. Homme, the band, and mixing engineer Mark Rankin have perfected an aesthetic. To fuck with it after a six year wait between LPs might have scored some headlines but surely would have lost them a chunk of their fanbase.
Not that Homme seems particularly worried about that. The 50-year-old musician has far bigger issues to wrestle with right now. Four years ago, his marriage to Brody Dalle fell apart, resulting in an acrimonious custody battle over their two kids. He’s also lost a number of close friends, including Lanegan, Taylor Hawkins, and Anthony Bourdain. In recent weeks, Homme revealed that he underwent surgery to remove a cancerous growth. Oh, and there’s also the small matter of our global society feeling on the verge of collapse and chaos.
Homme siphoned all of that pain and turmoil into In Times New Roman…, laying it bare in some of the most personal songs of his long career. On “Paper Machete,” he spits some venom towards his ex, wondering aloud, “Does your every single relation end in pain and misery?” and calling her a “coward.” Homme matches the tenor of his words with a nasty snarl of guitars and a solo that sounds like a laser etching out a mandala on his spinal column.
Surrounding that song are nine more that finds Homme directing his lyrical gaze to either the wider world or deeply within. The latter makes for the better material on this album. Homme casts himself as a modern day Sisyphus. Amid the stripper pole groove of “Negative Space” and the pulsating ’70s sleaze of “Emotion Sickness,” he appears resigned to — and almost appreciates — his fate as a mortal being capable of being physically and emotionally scarred. Going deeper still is “Carnavoyeur,” a blunt explication of depression and the realization that, as Homme groans out over a sludgy backbeat, even at the peak of his success, he has to reckon with the reality that “there are no more mountains to climb.”
There’s a sense that Homme and the band closed ranks in the creation of the new album. QOTSA produced the bulk of the album on their own, recording it at Homme’s home studio. And unlike many of the previous records, there are few outside contributions barring the addition of some strings and a touch of background vocals (Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders pops up to sing on “Emotion Sickness”).
Maybe the decision was due to COVID precautions or wanting to get back to basics as a band. Either way, the quintet sounds more settled into their particular lane in the manner of groups like Modest Mouse or AC/DC. No alarms. No surprises. Just variations on familiar sonic themes. The curveballs that do get thrown into the mix, like how the guitars and bass on “Obscenery” briefly fade away to allow the string quartet to take over the purring melody, or the two minute acoustic raga coda that ends the album, play out like planned idiosyncrasies: little ways to prove they can still get weird when they wanna.
The frustrating truth is that QOTSA could get so much weirder if they dared. All five members of the group are talented players with a deep knowledge of music past and present. When they push themselves outside their comfort zone as they did on 2017’s dramatic and playful Villains with a little prodding from producer Mark Ronson, the band can truly dazzle. Here, QOTSA play it pretty safe. That might have been a necessary step to help Homme feel sheltered enough to show off his still-fresh wounds, but, on the whole it keeps the evolution of the band from reaching that next crucial step forward.
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