In an interview with The Guardian, Queens of the Stone Age frontman, Josh Homme, described the debut Queens record as "trance music" and "something that girls could dance to," deliberately trying to step away from the very macho and very in-your-face approach of his previous band, legendary stoner rock pioneers, Kyuss. Kyuss was like a snarling dog: vicious, mean, and charged with a macho territorial aggression of a young band eager to prove itself. Queens may not lack aggression, but it's aggression of a different stripe. Whereas Kyuss records like Welcome to Sky Valley have power in their guitar, Queens' self-titled debut had a more laidback, intricate, at times almost beautiful quality to them. Instead of power, Queens of the Stone Age focuses on repetition and establishing a groove. The power in a song like "How to Handle a Rope (A Lesson in the Lariat)" is in the steadiness of its beat and how the song builds upon it. Homme called this "robot rock," and wanted Queens to be instantly recognizable upon the repetition of a specific kind of earworm riff. Unlike a lot of later Queens albums, the musicianship would be the centerpiece with the lyrics taking a backseat.
That's not to say that the lyrics are unimportant, but they, along with the vocals, seem to be garnish to the music rather than any kind of focal point. The most obvious example of this is in the mixing of the record. Homme has stated that he feels, going back and listening to the record, like there's an audible apprehension. At the time, he was much more reluctant to step into the position of frontman and vocalist, and so the fact that the vocal track is seemingly buried under the instrumentation seems to be a symptom of that. But the result of this is that the ear hooks onto those robot rock riffs more easily since that's where the emphasis is placed. Diving into the lyrics almost serves the music more than the writing, they reinforce the feel of the song more than the subject matter. "You Can't Quit Me Baby" creeps and stalks and lumbers uneasily, never truly finding steady footing and keeping the listener on their toes. Little wonder that the lyrics deal with a toxic relationship-turned-obsession with a morbid conclusion.
That being said, the subject matters of the songs tend to be very fleeting themselves. Later Queens records wouldn't exactly lay their meanings out on a silver platter, but with the lyrics much more prominent as time went on, they invited and evoked much more vivid imagery. Here, the subjects are more abstract, they go into less detail, they leave more to the imagination, and they give just enough for the mind to race with a mystical possibility. "Mexicola" is about a trip south of the border, and yet I don't ever feel like I have a tight grasp on the full meaning behind what's being said, and that's much to the song's benefit. We don't get a story, we get fleeting images, images of "a world that's full of shit and gasoline" and "velvet eyes in Mexico." There's danger around every corner, and all you have to guide you is an unrelenting drum beat and one of the grimiest and dankest bass riffs ever committed to tape.
Elsewhere, and really throughout the entire album, you see what started as a very interesting relationship between the band and one of their favorite subjects: drugs. Later albums would deal with that aspect very head-on, but here, Queens is very non-confrontational with the topic. A song like "Walkin' on the Sidewalks" talks about drug trips and "You Would Know" speaks of devils with pills in their eyes, but there's no real heed paid to it. The drugs are simply there, not good, not bad, simply a fact of life. Their subsequent album, Rated R, would start to more directly deconstruct the band's association with narcotics, and their third record, Songs for the Deaf, would very directly address the risks of being too close to these kinds of substances. Modern Queens records usually don't even address it at all anymore. Here, though, it's treated as nonchalantly and as commonplace as a rattlesnake in the desert: leave it be and it won't hurt you.
The musicianship in general is truly what should be admired here. The aformentioned "How to Handle the Rope" has easily the most evocative and fuzziest guitar intro on the record, and after just a couple repeats, ends up stuck in your head all day. The drum line teases its way into the song, and once it gets going, it drives forward like a beat up pickup truck racing down a desert highway. "Hispanic Impressions," one of a few instrumental songs on the record, is a cacophony of stuttering drum crashes and guitar riffs that hardly gives you a chance to breathe. If there was anything on the record to rival the power of Kyuss, this might be it. "Spider and Vinegaroons," with was added in a reissue along with "The Bronze" and "These Aren't the Droids You're Looking For," is a spacey and very ethereal number that drops you into a soundscape with a lone guitar and a steady clapping to lead you forward. There's a sense of scale and the smallness of the listener when putting this one on. It almost sounds like if Queens was hired to compose something for an episode of the Twilight Zone. A track mentioned earlier, "The Bronze," starts off similarly to "Spiders and Vinegaroons" in its spaciness, but then catches the listener off guard, whisking them away into a rush of guitar and a blast of hot desert air. A lot of the riffs evoke that kind of blast of dust-filled desert air. "The Bronze" comes pretty early in the tracklist, essentially an admission that one should never think they know what to expect from Queens, and that surprise is their modus operandi.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is the closer, "I Was a Teenage Hand Model." Past the admittedly bizarre title is probably the strangest track on the record, a track which pretty music completely abandons guitar for what sounds like a looping maraca, some bass, and a healthy dose of very strange synthesized computer sounds occasionally bleeping, blooping, and piano. Every now and then, some strange synths play on the fringes of the track, teasing where the track leads, but for most of it, it's surprisingly laidback. It's also probably the clearest Homme's vocals are on the whole record. Of course, what he's singing doesn't really make much sense. By the time we get to the last minute or so of the song, we're completely taken aback once the electronics that have been hiding in the background come in and hijack the track, turning a slow jam into what sounds like some kind of alien transmission, pulsating throughout until we get to the carrot at the end of the stick: a short phone message from Nick Oliveri, Queens' soon-to-be bassist who joined the band shortly after the album came out. It's a strange little easter egg to hide at the end of this record, and it's a nod towards what the band was looking forward to. The band was about to extend beyond the admittedly-wide grasp they'd established here. Queens had differentiated themselves from their predecessor, but they were still dwelling in the same deserts that birthed Kyuss. Looking forward, they'd chart their own path. There's a lot of ambition in this debut. There's a set style that they want to adhere to, but every now and then, you can see something bigger itching to get out.
