Peace Love Death Metal

20 in 2024: Peace, Love, Death Metal

March 23, 2004 brought this debut album from a little rock group known as the Eagles of Death Metal. A little Josh Homme side project with him and frontman Jesse Hughes. Homme, if you are unaware, is the frontman of Queens of The Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, and also was the lead guitarist in legendary stoner desert rock band Kyuss. In this group, he takes the backseat a bit and provides drums while Jesse Hughes sings and plays guitar.

This album is not to be taken seriously. The existence of this band was to give Josh and Jesse a place to just crank out some rock n roll jams and not have to feel burdened by "the pompous life of a rock star". So the tunes in here are super loose and swanky, with lots of a silly vocals and guitar riffs, even Josh's drumming feels very loose and carefree.

The album opens with a pretty rockin' tune in "I Only Want You". It's got janky guitar chords and a super catchy chorus sung in a goofy falsetto. This kind of vocal style is found all throughout most of this album. "Speaking In Tongues" is a really fun rockabilly-tinged song with a great drum beat and guitar work. It's goofy attitude feels similar to a band like Electric Six, it's loose and fun, a good time. Other highlights for me were songs like the closer "Miss Alissa" which another fun rock tune similar to "Tongues". EoDM also cover the Stealer's Wheel classic "Stuck in the middle(metal)", it's a pretty faithful cover, just more chunky and fuzzier in the guitar tones. Though I can't help but wish they went a bit harder with it to be honest.

The deeper cuts of this record are fine for the most part, but there are a handful of more forgettable tracks sadly. "So Easy" is just really repetitive and uninspired, "Flames Go Higher" was lacking in energy and bravado that was shown previously on the record, and "Midnight Creeper" is just straight up boring despite it's macabre lyrics.

Overall this record is pretty fine and brainless fun here and there, as far as rock music in this style goes I think you could do much better, but it's certainly clear that EoDM weren't trying to make a grand statement with this debut. They were making fun rock music for themselves, and the vibe throughout this record feels like a coupla friends in the garage making music together. This is further supported by snippets of in-studio audio between recording takes that were left in here between songs. This album ain't awful, it's definitely got some decent bangers in it, worth a spin if you're in the mood for some laid back rock music.

"Why aren't you dancing?"