10 Best Hard Rock Albums Of The 2000s
3. Rated R - Queens Of The Stone Age
Ever since the dissolution of stoner rock titans Kyuss, Joshua Homme used Queens of the Stone Age as his vehicle for bringing his warped version of hard rock to the world. After an impressive debut effort in the late 90's, Rated R presented QOTSA as a band that could have legitimate star potential.
For Queens aficionados, the band's classic lineup began to fall into place on this album with Homme joined by bassist Nick Oliveri and Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan. While the album is straight-ahead stoner rock, there is an eclectic mix of influences permeating this record that make it interesting from front to back. If you're into that more sludgy doom of older acts, "Better Living through Chemistry" and "I Think I Lost My Headache" are sonic headtrips that have a warped sense of reality. However, other tracks like "Monsters in the Parasol" and "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret" have their own unique identity with their robotic sense of swagger and guitar riffs which work incredibly well despite the logical wrongness of their shifts.
Rated R is the sound of Queens coming into their own with a sound that can only be described as the sonic equivalent of drinking 3 cognacs consecutively.