Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age

Songs for the Deaf, Queens of the Stone Age's third album, came out on Interscope on August 27, 2002, the follow-up to Rated R, and it's a desert-baked, full-throttle road trip with the stereo cranked. Eric Valentine, Adam Kasper and Josh Homme produced it, a whole crowd of guest musicians pitched in, and it was the first Queens record with Dave Grohl on drums and the last with Nick Oliveri on bass.

It's loosely built as a concept album, a drive through the California desert from Los Angeles to Joshua Tree, flipping between radio stations from towns along the way like Banning and Chino Hills. Between the dial-twisting, the riffs come in like a sandstorm. Grohl drums like a man possessed, and the guitars lock into hypnotic, piston-pumping grooves. "No One Knows" stalks on a stop-start riff that's impossible to shake, "Go with the Flow" is a turbocharged surge of pure momentum, "First It Giveth" whips up a frenzy, "God Is in the Radio" grinds and broods, and "You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire" is a shrieking, short-fused blast. "Hangin' Tree" trudges in low and sinister.

The critics raved, and it gave the band their first gold record in the US; in Europe it sold a million copies, earning a platinum award in 2008.

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