10 Most Underrated Rock Music Albums Of The 2000s
5. Era Vulgaris - Queens of the Stone Age
The fact that Queens of the Stone Age managed to even stay together after Songs for the Deaf feels like a miracle. After making one of the greatest concept records of the modern age, Josh Homme quickly found himself without a band, with Dave Grohl going back to the Foo Fighters and parting ways with Nick Oliveri and Mark Lanegan. Though there may have been life after death on Lullabies to Paralyze, Era Vulgaris is where Homme's freak flag showed its true colors.
Being a lot more to the point than most other Queens records, the riffs on here feel a lot more jagged and raw compared to the last few records. You can definitely feel Josh's desire to work with Trent Reznor around this time, since most of these licks have that same kind of dark atmosphere that would work perfectly with Reznor's production style.
There are also some decent single material on here as well, whether it's the smooth as hell Elvis impersonation going on in the song Make it Wit Chu or the ear candy guitar licks that pop up in the gaps of songs like 3's and 7's. For most fans of QOTSA, this may have been the first record that showed that they were fallible. In Josh's mind though, this is probably the closest they've ever come to making an authentic form of robot rock.