A music genre is in dire straits when the best album it has to boast in recent memory can be best described as 'a very solid album.' Well, for some time now, heavy metal has been that genre, and Lullabies to Paralyze, the new album from alt-metal stalwarts Queens of the Stone Age, is that very solid album.
Lullabies to Paralyze begins exactly how one might expect a hard rock/heavy metal album called Lullabies to Paralyze to begin-a deep-voiced man singing a creepy, sinister lullaby, backed by slow, ominous acoustic guitar playing. The song-\This Lullaby""-is a groan-worthy tie-in to the name of the album, but fortunately it is also the only on this album that QOTSA resemble their metal counterparts in mediocrity.
The rest of the album is a more than worthy follow-up to their last album, 2002's thrilling Songs for the Deaf. Two notable things present on that record but absent here are guitarist/occasional lead singer Nick Oliveri (who was booted out of the group for unknown reasons) and insanely catchy, rock radio-ready songs like ""No One Knows"" that made their last LP into a surprise hit. In spite of these absences, Lullabies is hardly a departure from the enjoyable sound and the high quality that made Songs one of the best records of its year.
The first real winner on Lullabies is ""Everybody Knows That You Are Insane,"" which showcases QOTSA doing what they do best: mashing up their influences into a product that still bears their own distinctive (and high quality) stamp.
The song begins with a soulful Jimmy Page-like guitar wailing that soon gives way to a Nirvana-esque mish-mash of thrash and punk during the chorus. This abrupt switch in style is handled deftly by the group's lead singer and mastermind, Josh Homme, whose vocals remain free of the monotone masculine growl common to so many metal bands and thus are actually fun to listen to.
Instead, Homme opts to cop the bluesy rock swagger of hard rock frontmen like Iggy Pop and Chris Cornell, and by lending himself to a more flexible vocal style he helps to keep QOTSA's diverse range of styles comfortably within a sound that is their own.
The epic-and very loud-""Someone's in the Wolf"" marks the album's last high point, and though there are still five songs left to go on the record, this doesn't detract from Lullabies to Paralyze's status as the best metal album in recent memory. The sobering fact is that by producing an album of stoner metal that includes eight great songs in a row, QOTSA establish their brand of hard rock as miles above the competition.
