Seven albums into their career, Queens Of The Stone Age continue to amaze. 'Villains' is meticulously constructed, endlessly exciting and deeply rewarding.
Villains, this deep and danceable delight, ends with two searing six minute tracks: the razor-blade blues of the White Stripes-ish The Evil Has Landed, and a sunrise-of-the-ancients pop finalé called Villains Of Circumstance.
Is QOTSA’s seventh album Villains a little slicker? A little tidier? Danceable? The answer is yes. But Ronson’s touch has not made Josh Homme’s songs any less heavy, weird or ambitious.
Villains is all swinging dance-rock and atmospheric vulnerability, with Ronson locking a serious groove to the Queens’ Grimm Brothers gothic architecture.
The band have retained their brusque character but it’s less ponderous than before, with several tracks taken at an unfeasibly rapid tempo; while Ronson has brought production clarity and a punchy funk sensibility that transforms QOTSA’s trademark robot-rock rhythms into something much more dynamic and danceable.
A lightly bookended album, Villains isn’t the powerhouse that …Like Clockwork was, but it charts new ground for the band nonetheless.
Villains is by far their most danceable and commercial to date. However, stoner rock purists needn’t worry that Palm Desert’s finest have suddenly discovered a taste for tropical house. Villains still possesses plenty of the band’s trademark pulverizing guitar riffs and sludgy basslines.
Villains makes for a compelling lane change, finding the impetus to bring an interesting makeover.
‘Villains’ is Queens Of The Stone Age at their darkly seductive best, from the garish cover art to its well-crafted production, this is an album that proves that there is still a place for rock music in the mainstream of 2017.
Four years on and with an army of keyboards in tow, Homme ... mostly succeeds in accomplishing his vision, making an album that dazzles in contrast to the previous album's darkness.
A much more cohesive album than ...Like Clockwork, one that seems hell-bent on turning out an incendiary dance-rock record rather than constantly shifting stylistic shape in the way that last LP did.
At this stage, Queens of the Stone Age don't have many new tricks in their bag but their consummate skill—accentuated by the fact that this is the first QOTSA album that features just the band alone, not even augmented by Mark Lanegan—means they know when to ratchet up the tempo, when to slide into a mechanical grind, when to sharpen hooks so they puncture cleanly. All that makes Villains a dark joy, a record that offers visceral pleasure in its winking menace.
The bequiffed high priest of desert rock has always imbued his full-throttle stoner sound with a certain amount of hip-shaking sass, but on ‘Villains’, he truly lets his dancing shoes take the floor.
Villains far exceeds expectations of the best-case scenario for a Queens of the Stone Age album or a mainstream rock album in 2017.
On the whole, Villains isn’t Homme’s strongest collection of songwriting. That said, it’s the first Queens Of The Stone Age album where the sounds behind it are consistently strong enough to carry the load.
This album's pseudo-danceable moments add welcome wrinkles to a formula that's otherwise begun to feel leaden.
This record is strong from top to bottom, and another great entry into Queens of the Stone Age’s catalog.
Overall Villains makes solid progress in the macabre direction Homme is currently choosing to call home, but my concern is whether this is at the expense of some of their more interesting qualities.
This is a Queens record that has no pretenses, no false identity. And it provides just the right remedy to refuel rock radio’s loss of identity.
With production flourishes from Mark Ronson, Josh Homme leads the band's most accessible album in decades. It’s equal parts disco inferno and devil-may-care experimentation.
The result is not “QOTSA go pop”, but Ronson’s fresh ears do bring out the playfulness in their mean and muscular, feline and sensual sound, adding an extra-rubbery bounce to their rhythms.
Mark Ronson's flat production doesn't do any favors for Villains, Queens of the Stone Age's most mixed bag of tracks to date.
Villains isn’t a terrible record, but it’s not a fantastic record either, and that’s perhaps the least kind thing that could be said about new material from a band which we’ve come to expect a lot from.
Dwelling on better times of a bygone era is a fundamental pillar of escapism, but it's disconcerting when one of the most uncompromising, forward-thinking bands in the rock pantheon leans so heavily on what worked in the past that they forget that the onus is on them to innovate.
If you’re looking for something poppy/dancey yet mildly dark (we’ll call it “twilight”), maybe you’ll groove on it. But even the drums sound as if they’ve been gated up the ass and the bass-lines leave no lasting impression. If you’re looking for the band that has melted my face eight different times in concert through the powers of rock, it has ducked out to use the toilet.
A fantastic follow-up to Like Clockwork. I would say this absolutely holds up to Like Clockwork and a groovy, funky, rockin album. Can't wait for what these guys do next.
Let me know what you think about this album below and have a great day.
Villains is like a machine that starts off working really well but after three songs, it starts to jam up. So, you whip out your trusty offbrand WD-40, BadSongBeGone-40, and get to spraying. And then it works!... for like one more song, after which you have to reapply it because it keeps on jamming up.
I can't help but love this thing. I know this shouldn't be my favorite Queens of the Stone Age album, but it is. Sorry lol
This is a fun, springy little album. It was impossible from the jump for this album to match the thematic or qualitative heights that "...Like Clockwork" brought to the table so taking the sound in a new direction was probably the right move. This album isn't breaking any new ground, and the producer Mark Ronson (Uptown Funk) gives this a hyper polished sound that some may not like, but there is a definite fun to be had on this album. It won't be one I return to often, but you could ... read more
1 | Feet Don't Fail Me 5:41 | 90 |
2 | The Way You Used To Do 4:34 | 79 |
3 | Domesticated Animals 5:20 | 79 |
4 | Fortress 5:27 | 83 |
5 | Head Like a Haunted House 3:21 | 80 |
6 | Un-Reborn Again 6:40 | 80 |
7 | Hideaway 4:18 | 71 |
8 | The Evil Has Landed 6:30 | 87 |
9 | Villains of Circumstance 6:09 | 83 |
#1 | / | Classic Rock Magazine |
#3 | / | MOJO |
#5 | / | Diffuser |
#8 | / | Rolling Stone |
#8 | / | Rolling Stone (Australia) |
#9 | / | NZ Herald |
#9 | / | Q Magazine |
#12 | / | OOR |
#13 | / | State |
#17 | / | The Independent |