Naturally, as has been the case with most of Paul's suggestions, I'd never heard of Kyuss. I had, of course, heard of Queens of the Stone Age and this where Josh Homme started out with his school friends as lead guitarist.
If you fell in love with Queens you will absolutely love this album. This is stoner rock. When I think of stoner rock, this is what I what I think stoner rock sounds like. I would love to listen to this after smoking one of those fragrant roll up type things.
To say lead singer John Garcia's voice is a bit gravelly wouldn't do it justice. He sounds like he's singing from a smoke filled room with a bag on his head full of more smoke.
Apparently these guys used to drive out into the dessert (yep, they're from the States, not Milton Keynes) and plug their equipment into generators. They became know as 'generator parties'. How fricking cool is that?!
Welcome to Sky Valley was released in 1994 a year after it was recorded and it's the sound of a band at their height. Sure Homme would go onto to do great things with the first two Queens albums but it's here, where he's focused on just playing guitar in a truly sonically awesome way, that I think I've heard his best tunes. It's relentless at times, indeed originally the album only consisted of four tracks all mashed together so that you couldn't skip through easily and listening to it now, you can see how that would of worked well. I am a sucker for stuff like that where bands mess with convention... and play in the dessert...
If you like your music dark, dirty and throbbing get hold of a copy of this. It's aces.
★ ★ ★ ★
Now go have a look to see what Paul thought of one of his favourite albums here.
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