10 2000s Albums That Are Practically Flawless

If you were trying to make a name for yourself as a rock star in the '00s, you did have a few options. You could either try your hand at some of the nu metal stylings of someone like Korn, or you could go the exact opposite direction and try to make a pop punk record in the vein of Blink 182. And yet somehow Queens of the Stone Age did neither and ended up with one of the greatest records of them all.

Made as a pseudo concept album about a trip through the desert, Josh Homme made his musical masterpiece with this album, bringing in everyone from ex Kyuss members like Nick Oliveri to getting Dave Grohl behind the drum kit for a project for the first time since Nirvana's end. Instead of the usual clean guitar sound, there's a lot of grittiness that comes off of these songs, as if the music itself has been sitting out in the sun too long and is on the verge of falling apart.

Although Homme might have just been cribbing from his old ideas, these are the kinds of songs that made rock and roll feel slightly dangerous again. You would see this on the same MTV stations, but this was not like Blink 182 or Sum 41. This is where the rockers go when they finally grow up.