August 2002 - Eye Magazine: Songs for the Deaf review
by SB
Those of us still scraping up our brains from the Lee's Palace floor after getting our heads blown off at the Queens' visit this past June -- one bass-kick from guest drummer Dave Grohl was all it really took to get the grey matter splattering -- may not find the Queens' third album as lobotomizing; for a band that leans so heavily on the bottom end, Grohl's drums sound oddly compressed here. But for everyone else, Songs for the Deaf is still a most formidable mindfuck. Once again, the Queens treat rock like lava in a lamp -- but we're not talking stoner connotations as much as amorphous qualities, as the Queens melt down the metal into new-wave power-pop ("No One Knows"), '60s psych-mod ("Another Love Song") and spaghetti western ("Mosquito Song") forms, though unlike 2000's schizoid Rated R, the genre jumps feel more like logical evolutions than practical jokes. Still, no matter how much Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri broaden their songwriting scope, there's no denying what they do best: mutant sludge-metal colossi -- like "Song for the Dead," a nauseous mauling of Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" riff -- that induce involuntary bowel movements on impact.

Four stars

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