…Like Clockwork by Queens of the Stone Age

...Like Clockwork, the sixth studio album from Queens of the Stone Age, landed on Matador in early June 2013, hitting British shops on the 3rd and American ones the following day, the first chapter of a trilogy that continued with Villains and In Times New Roman.... The band produced it themselves after a string of false starts, and the sessions that began in August 2012 were rough going: Josh Homme had hoped Trent Reznor might produce, and long-serving drummer Joey Castillo departed along the way.

What came out of the storm is a dark, bruised record, all creeping grooves, desert-baked blues riffs and Homme's falsetto curling around songs about pushing through hard times. It was the first album with bassist Michael Shuman and guitarist and keyboardist Dean Fertita fully on board alongside Troy Van Leeuwen. Critics loved it, and it gave the band their first number one on the Billboard 200, plus three Grammy nominations.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.