Queens of the Stone Age had already moved well past the point where discussions of the band's work felt compelled to mention co-founder, frontman and ultimate bandleader Josh Homme's past in Kyuss and the Screaming Trees, but Songs For The Deaf is the album that wiped the whole slate clean and ushered QOTSA to the top of the post-millennial rock-'n'-roll heap. From here on in, Queens of the Stone Age was the band to beat. And it didn't hurt, of course, that Homme and then bandmate Nick Oliveri -- who would be kicked to the curb by the next record -- managed to rope Dave Grohl (of Nirvana/Foo Fighters notoriety, just in case you've been living in a cave) to drum on the whole thing. 

Structured as a stoned late-night drive through the California desert from Los Angeles to Homme's longtime studio perch in Palm Desert with various radio stations wafting in and out along the way, Songs For The Deaf flows the way a concept album should. Deftly boogie-ing hard-rock workouts like the monster single "No One Knows" blend effortlessly into punishing stoner-metal epics and Oliveri's spastic hardcore freakouts, making room for occasional flashes of the late Mark Lanegan's Gothic baritone grandeur along the way. By the end of the touring cycle, Queens were an unlikely fixture on rock radio playing venues three or four times the ones they'd started in -- albeit no longer with Grohl in the fold -- and well on their way to the arenas and festival headline stages they enjoy today. With good reason: Songs For The Deaf is a starmaking album and one of the best rock records of the 2000s to date.

TRACKLISTING:

1. You Think I Ain't Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire
2. No One Knows
3. First It Giveth
4. Song For The Dead
5. The Sky Is Fallin'
6. Six Shooter
7. Hangin' Tree
8. Go With The Flow
9. Gonna Leave You
10. Do It Again
11. God Is In The Radio
12. Another Love Song
13. Song For The Deaf
14. Mosquito Song