Songs for the Deaf

Really good rock album from a time where rock was gaining and losing conscious, entering and leaving and entering the ICU et cetera.

But Songs For The Deaf appeared as a true peak of Josh Homme's career, and maybe even alternative rock in the early 2000s. It takes the aggressiveness of Kyuss and dilutes it just enough to thread that line of being great and easily accessible (probably due to the input of Dave Grohl).

To pick one clear winner is hard, but You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire is a favorite of mine with its driving motorik and aggressive delivery that sets the tone for this entire album. Mosquito Song, albeit different, is also nothing short of great.

Rated R was good, but it lacked the expansiveness and creativity that Songs For The Deaf has. Nothing can top the feral feeling this one has.

Oon monesti kuullut tätä bändiä hypetettävän mutta häpeäkseni on myönnettävä, etten ollut kokonaista levyä kuunnellut. Tää oli kyllä kova!

Favourite songs: No One Knows, Go With the Flow, "You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire", Song For the Dead, God Is In the Radio, First It Giveth, Song for the Drag

Least favourite songs: Hanging Tree, Mosquito Song

4/5

Incredible album. Definitely one of the quintessential stoner/desert rock albums of all time.

Not the biggest QOTSA fan, but this album definitely has some high points that are worth listening to. 3.5/5

The best hard rock album of the 21st century, if not the best hard rock album ever? For all the hard rock dreck I drudged through in the main list, there's no way that Songs for the Deaf should have slipped through the cracks, but fortunately the user list comes to the rescue.

I have history with Songs for the Deaf, it was one of the first albums I fell in love with during my early teens and an album that helped shape my music taste. I haven't listened to it in a long time so I'm trying to approach this from an unbiased perspective, but fortunately this album still rocks.

I made it sound like this was just a hard rock album, but that's doing this album great disservice as there are a lot of factors that make it click. SftD is a variety of hard rock known as "stoner rock", which takes influence from psychedelic rock and heavy metal but doesn't go far enough in either direction, opting to stay within the more accessible realm of hard rock. This album is also alternative rock, which is important for reasons I'll get into later.

The hard rock elements give these songs a much needed oomph, but it's not the only thing in the album that achieves this. This album is notorious for its "loudness" (in short a mastering technique which reduces dynamic range making the quiet moments less quiet,) and while it's generally considered a negative thing I think this album is one of the rare cases where it works in the albums favour. This album blasts you with sound and almost every song does this at some point to give the songs a punch, and that's an accurate descriptor as sometimes the sound bursts are so powerful it feels like a physical hit. The first song "[...] Millionaire" uses this effect multiple times and it really sends a message as to what to expect from the album.

The Queens of the Stone Age album in the book is far heavier on the stoner rock side and it hurts the accessibility of it, there are a few songs that go into alt rock territory and I think they're the best on that album and a prototype for their next two albums, Rated R, and Songs for the Deaf. If Only is easily the poppiest of the bunch although seems very primitive compared to anything from this album, but the seed was planted back then. The alternative rock stylings on this album give it a much needed boost for hooks to counterbalance to the hardness.

For this album Mark Lanegan (from the Screaming Trees) and David Grohl were recruited, and the inclusion of these two grunge legends had great impact. Grunge was a great example of mixing heavy and aggressive sounds with pop music (and underneath rocky exterior this is a pop album) so I think they were added to give the album that sweeter appeal. I think Lanegan might actually be the secret sauce as to why the songs sound so good, as the band lost much of the pop appeal after his departure.

The final thing that makes this so special are the radio broadcast parody snippets. SftD is a concept album, supposedly of a road trip from LA, through the Californian deser,t to Joshua Tree. In-between songs there's radio skits and radio dial turning to give it the immersive feel of flicking through radio stations while on a road trip, also with some satire on radio culture. The album already has a very desert type feeling to it so these two factors combined put you in that frame of mind for most of the album's runtime.

The album ends on a folky, chamber pop song called Mosquito Song. It's far from the best song on here (or maybe not, I find it very difficult to pick favorites on this album), but flipping the entire album on its head is an interesting way to close it out. There's no electric guitars and it's a very delicate and soft song, with a vaguely Latin theme, so completely different from anything else. Interestingly Mosquito Song still manages to pack a punch with the orchestral swells. One of the members of Ween also get a writing credit here

Should it be on the main list: Yes, 100%. How did the debut make it in over this?

Top 3 songs: No One Knows, Another Love Song, Song for the Deaf

This is such an amazing album that I can even overlook the fake radio thing that's not really useful.

This is a more solid pick than the debut album in the official list. Pretty great; high four.

QotSA is one of those bands whose music I enjoy but not for long listening sessions. For some reason their music becomes droney after listening for more than a couple songs and it all starts blending together. But like I said, I do enjoy the songs individually. 3.5 rating but I'll bump it up to a 4.

an album that deftly mixes the dulcet sweet tones of their vocalist and the groove crunch of the band. No One Knows is such a good single. First It Giveth and Song For The Dead are both awesome. The concept of this being a radio station tune search is also pretty rad. Go With The Flow is another great song. An album so stacked up with hits it is impossible to ignore.

Very straightforward rock. I feel nothing about these guys, but I also can't really fault them for anything either

This album deserves the hype, because the stars aligned for this album to come out at the perfect time, with the perfect line-up of band members, and just enough hits to make an hour fly by. Listening to something like this after the snorefest that was the Clutch album makes this only stand out more, and it's no wonder that this album made it to the big time.

Not much needs to be said about this one. I was a huge Kyuss fan in the 90s, and Queens of the Stone Age kept carrying that musical style forward. This album was the deserved breakthrough.
Songs like "Go With The Flow," "No One Knows," and "Song For The Dead" (one of the best drum intros of all time) completely balance out the few somewhat lesser songs on the album. Even if the AM radio intermissions start to become a bit annoying.
An easy 5 stars.

Yes! My review of ther self-titled (which was in the original list) said "Rated R or Song for the Deaf should probably be here in its stead ... I will be a bit disappointed if this is the only time Josh and the gang feature on this list."

Good to see at least one person agreed with me!
This is probably their best album, but still sounds as weird as everything else. The variety of styles and sounds, combined with the wee "radio announcements" makes it feel like a compilation album - in a good way!

Also part of the soundtrack of my life from ages 19-23, so always an album I will look back on fondly.

Yes this is a better album than the QoS one of the list. Could argue their best album, though I tend to personally prefer like clockwork. This is still a five star album in my book.

"Go With The Flow" is one of my favourite songs of all time; it's just so dynamic and visceral, and I do like "No One Knows" a lot. But this album has not stood the test of time: the wacky GTA-radio like interstitials, the weaker songs: "Six Shooter," "Another Love Song;" they drifted away from Kyuss-like stoner rock and tried and failed to do different things. It's at once their highest point and the beginning of their end.