Queens of the Stone Age

The revolving-door music collective Queens of the Stone Age, based around singer-songwriter and guitarist Josh Homme, is one of the most highly evolved and critically acclaimed hard rock bands of the oughts. The band's eclectic approach to rock produced arty, blues-based albums that wandered stylistically from gentle acoustic songs and Delta blues stomps to Black Sabbath-like metal and the thick, sludgy garage rock characteristic of early-Nineties grunge bands.

When pioneering stoner-rock band Kyuss broke up after its 1995 album ...And the Circus Leaves Town, Homme moved to Seattle to be the Screaming Trees' touring guitarist. Within a year Homme formed the grunge-metal supergroup Gamma Ray along with Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, Screaming Trees bassist Van Conner and Monster Magnet guitarist John McBain. He changed the band's name to Queens of the Stone Age when a German metal band of the same name threatened to sue. For Queens' 1998 self-titled debut album, Homme recruited his old Kyuss band mate, drummer Alfredo Hernández, as well as Kyuss producer and Masters of Reality singer/guitarist Chris Goss and guitarist Dave Catching. The album didn't attract much mainstream attention but was critically acclaimed and led to a deal with Interscope Records.

Within the same post-Kyuss period Homme also initiated "the Desert Sessions," a conceptual far-ranging music project featuring a changing cast of musicians spontaneously recording at a ranch in the Palm Desert area of California. The Desert Sessions would include a variety of musicians from Kyuss and Bjork to PJ Harvey and Dean Ween. Using his "Desert Sessions" revolving-door model for Queens' second album, 2000's R, Homme brought in a new group of musicians including another Kyuss vetern, bassist Nick Oliveri, who had been playing with the punk band the Dwarves. Oliveri and Homme co-wrote most of the album's tracks. Homme also tapped two hard rock notables –Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees and Rob Halford of Judas Priest – as guest vocalists. The album kicked off with the stoner anthem "Feel Good Hit of the Summer," a driving punk-metal song in which Homme reels off a laundry list of drugs, from alcohol to marijuana to ecstasy. R, which featured the single "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret" (Number 36 Mondern Rock) solidified Queens' reputation as one of the more adventurous acts in hard rock and won the band a slot on the 2000 Ozzfest tour.

In 2002 ex-Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl joined Queens for Songs for the Deaf and the subsequent tour. The album reached Number 17 and produced two charting singles, "No One Knows" (Number One Modern Rock) and "Go with the Flow" (Number Seven Modern Rock). As with R, Homme and Oliveri co-wrote most of the songs. By the time Homme began recruiting for his next Queens album, he had fired Oliveri and began collaborating more with former A Perfect Circle guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen and ex-Danzig drummer Joey Castillo (both of whom came on board for the Songs for the Deaf tour), with whom he co-wrote most of 2005's Lullabies to Paralyze. In addition to Queens stalwart Lanegan, Homme also brought in Distillers singer (and Courtney Love sound-alike) Brody Dalle – former wife of Rancid's Tim Armstrong and future wife of Homme – as well as Garbage singer Shirley Manson and ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons. The album shot to Number 5 and the single "Little Sister" went to Number Two on thee Modern Rock Chart. The group also released a live album in 2005, Over the Years and Through the Woods.

The band's 2007 album, Era Vulgaris, another critical success, dipped in sales compared with the previous two studio releases, reaching Number 14 on the Top 200. Still, both of its singles, "3's & 7's" and "Sick, Sick, Sick" made the Modern Rock Chart. In addition to his work with Queens, the prolific Homme has played on albums by a number of rock, hip-hop and electronic artists and released music by various side projects, including Mondo Generator (which Oliveri would take over after his dismissal) and Eagles of Death Metal who first appeared on the the Desert Sessions.