http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kzKfwwDFRcConfession: Queens of the Stone Age are the last band I’ve ever fallen in love with. That’s not to say they’re the last band I’ve liked or even the last band that I’ve really got into. I have plenty of those. But Queens is the last band that I’ve fallen for so hard that they’ve reserved a special place in the coveted “Tony McMillen’s Favorite Bands Of All Time” menagerie. Seriously, this thing is more exclusive than a nun’s vagina and usually reserved for bands that I got into when I was aged 12-17. Because those are the formative years when it comes to falling in love with music and even if we in stray in our later years, we always come back to our true loves.

But I don’t believe love is unconditional. Love has to be continually renewed and preserved. It’s a conversation and it has to keep going. It has to stay lively and it has to keep getting deeper and more revealing. Or else it’s just an obligation and it’s not love at all. We should go back because we want to go back, not out of some misplaced sense of duty but because that love is the only place we can get what really makes us come alive. Well, with their new record …Like Clockwork, Queens of the Stone Age has more than justified my love.

The album begins with a brief atmospheric introduction consisting of low hiss and a faint clattering of breaking glass that steady rises in volume and violent consistency until the drums kick in. These drums arrive like some pissed off Silver Surfer heralding the coming of a drunken and weirdly turned on Galactus that doesn’t want to devour our world so much as he just wants to get into its pants. And he will, trust me on that.

The first track “Keep Your Eyes Peeled” lurches forward with a hiccuped grind of a beat. The guitar and bass on this thing produce such an electronic growl they might as well have been lifted from a John Carpenter soundtrack. Crippled but coquettish, like a hooker in a wheelchair, the song drags its way across your ears and makes you more than happy that it shared its sickness. It’s a great opener from a band that’s had its share. The band swings on this track along with much of the rest album, sounding like an aluminum baseball bat covered in sugar, sticky and metallic.

The second track is an easy contender for next single, “I Sat By The Ocean” does that thing that Queens, and leader Homme have personally always excelled at: Sounding cocky but heartbroken all at the same time. It’s the sound of blissful abandon replete with Homme’s unmistakable slide guitar snaking its way throughout the track. Homme’s slide playing is becoming some of my favorite in rock since George Harrison’s or Robbie Krieger’s. Dude is a major finger-wizard with his entire arsenal of guitar playing but his slide stuff especially stands out.

What stands out about …Like Clockwork as a whole is how relaxed and introspective it sounds compared to the rest of the band’s catalogue. Some people equate more relaxed sounds with being boring but not me. I welcome the more chilled out and dare I say it, vulnerable side of Queens. While not gone completely, the pummeling robot riffage that has in part come to define the Queens sound is downplayed mostly on this record. What’s replaced it is a greater emphasis on the creepy, crooning melodies that have always been present in the band’s sound. That and dark, sometimes to the point of being fucking evil sounding guitar snarls that can feel synthy at times and then sludge bludgeoning at others.

One of the best album tracks is a two-headed chunk of nightmare candy called “Kalopsia”. The word means “a condition where things appear more beautiful than they are” and was actually suggested by Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner, who guest stars on this album but not on this track. Homme explains,

“I called him (Turner) one day a few years ago, when I was first starting to think about the possibility of getting to make a record, and said ‘hey man, give me a good line.’ He hit be back and he was like ‘kalopsia,’ and I said ‘kalopsia, what the hell’s that?’ and he said ‘it’s a condition where everything seems more beautiful than it actually is.’”

Part tranquil opiate overdose, part full on spaz frenzy. “Kalopsia” begins sounding unlike anything else Queens has done. Which is saying something, because this is an already diverse band that has covered some ground musically so to still throw us a curveball like this, and for it to be such a lovely monster of a song, that’s commendable. The song’s verses are filled with beautiful romantic sounding piano (courtesy of Mr. Trent Reznor, matter of fact) and behind them there is an eerily, almost out of place, keyboard bass that makes the listener feel anxious. It’s like scanning through the channels and stumbling upon a soft focus, sweetly serene scene that’s just a little too damn sweet. So you don’t trust it. Then it hits you why: because you’re in the middle of a horror film, and you just know it’s going to explode any moment into a total hell ride.

And “Kalopsia” does and it does so stunningly. While the mellifluous and creepily comforting verses sound almost like the Twin Peaks theme music from Angelo Badalamenti as Homme sings, “Bye, bye black balloon. See you real soon.” the chorus then crashes in like a trapdoor, bringing that familiar Queens sound. That churning crunch of guitars and drums, the desert rock sound, the “robot rock” that Homme has been delivering to us for years.

I will admit that …Like Clockwork is a great record but it is no Songs For The Deaf Part Deux, or Songs For the Deafer. This is what a lot of people were hoping for when word got out that Dave Grohl would be back behind the drumkit for this album. Well, he is back but for only half of the songs, and for the other half it’s former Queens drummer Joey Castillo, doing a great job on the kit as always. The last track on the album features drums by the Queens’ new drummer Jon Theodore (he of Mars Volta fame). So yes, Dave’s back but don’t expect that huge monster sound he brought for Songs For The Deaf. …Like Clockwork isn’t about gigantic riffs ping ponging around with Kaiju sized drum fills. If you want more of that the closest Josh Homme and Dave Grohl have come to recapturing their stoner/punk, Stooges meets Zeppelin vibe again is when they teamed up with the actual bass player of Led Zeppelin and made the solid album Them Crooked Vultures. And even that was not Songs For The Deaf Revisited.

And I for one am glad that Josh Homme hasn’t tried to do that again with this new album. Yes, …Like Clockwork is a great record and it might become a classic someday but it will also never reach the heights or have the impact of Queens of the Stone Age’s self-titled debut or its follow up Rated R or the aforementioned Songs For The Deaf. But what could? Those records can never be replaced or replicated because those records are what we define Queens by. …Like Clockwork wisely avoids the comparisons by taking the band to different and weirder shores.

The band will never make albums that have the same effect as their first three and that’s fine because they already made those albums. …Like Clockwork might not ever be as loved as those classic records but it also is not a bloated, half classic record like Lullabies To Paralyze was. Despite a great first half with stuff like “Little Sister” and “Someone’s In The Wolf” the second half of that album definitely dragged. They could have cut two or three tracks and it would have been perfect. And …Like Clockwork sounds much more inspired than the Queens’ last record Era Vulgaris. I honestly don’t think this band has made a bad album yet but Era stands out as a low period especially when compared to this new record.

The band is trying something new here and it works remarkably well. There’s a thread of sadness and regret throughout the record and a jarring sincerity that I haven’t heard in Homme’s lyrics (at least uniformly, across a whole record) since the debut album. The wiseacre double entendres and shit pun brilliance are still here but in smaller doses than on past records. The old Homme slyness manifests itself the most on the song “Smooth Sailing”. The result sounds sort of like Queens taking nautical lyrical cues from “I’m On A Boat” by The Lonely Island and making it their own sleaze-groove, filth dungeon, disco freak-out.

But the fun is short lived as the penultimate track “I Appear Missing” waltzes on next; turning off the lights and bringing the album back to its smugly damaged, siren song charms. The first half of the song has already been featured in the excellent animated clips that Queens has been releasing online for the album.

But for the song to fully be appreciated you really have to hear the last half of it. The guitar playing at the song’s coda is some of the best and most passionate of Homme’s career and the same goes for the lyrics. “Don’t cry, with my toes on the edge, it’s such a lovely view. I….. I never loved anything until I loved you.”

Earlier in the song Homme bleakly quips, “It’s only falling in love because you hit the ground.” The pain behind this lyric, especially seeing as it is delivered as a black joke, speaks for the whole album. …Like Clockwork is an album about realizing that falling in love isn’t always good for us. Especially when we fall so hard that our love begins to resemble madness. Part of falling in love and staying in love with something is once and a while you got to strip away the layers of the thing and see what’s really there. You have to take a good look and see if there’s something new there that you haven’t seen before or maybe something old that you just never really noticed. Then after your discovery you have to try and figure out whether or not you’re still in love.

Queens Of The Stone Age have taken it upon themselves to take themselves apart with their new album, to show you where they stand now and to find out where exactly you do. As for me, the band sounds different now than the band I fell in love with years ago. I’m tempted to write “and I love them for it,” but that’s not really it. I just love who they were and also love who they are now. “It’s such a lovely view.”