‘Feel Good Hit of the Summer’: when the Queens of the Stone Age joined forces with Rob Halford
The whole point behind Queens of the Stone Age’s music was that there were never any rules. The format for Kyuss had been so strict when Josh Homme was in the stoner rock legends, and when they dissolved, he knew that his next project was about having as much fun as he could with his friends. While their first records were still a massive collaboration among Homme’s musical buddies, no one could have predicted that Rob Halford of Judas Priest would end up having a cameo on ‘Feel Good Hit of the Summer’.
Because listening to Homme’s voice, Halford is nowhere near anyone’s first choice for a backup singer. Here was a guy that had the capacity to break glass with his voice, so there was no reason to believe that he was just going to sit in the background and someone tear through a full-on power metal scream.
But the version of Halford that showed up to the studio had gone through many different styles before getting in touch. The last decade of his career had been about spreading his wings and seeing what else was out there, and while Fight saw him going for a moodier listening experience, two had been his latest venture, trading in his ‘Metal God’ credentials in an attempt to sound like the even more metallic version of Nine Inch Nails and Ministry.
For all of the great screams that Halford could lay down, he still had an impressive lower range to work with. If you go back and listen to those early Judas Priest albums, his crooning voice does take some getting used to, but when he sinks into his deeper register, he can sound downright foreboding like he does in the background here.
While Homme is still at the very front of the mix, it’s easy to pick out Halford’s voice slowly building in intensity as the track plays out. Despite only having one lyric to work with, hearing Halford getting as close to the mic as possible for the whisper section of the song feels like the equivalent of the devil offering you some of the aforementioned drugs as you make your way across the desert landscape.
Then again, not having him come in on the main break of the tune feels like a missed opportunity. For as excellent as it is to have ‘The Metal God’ at one’s disposal, choosing to leave him out of the one section that’s perfect for a giant scream feels like buying a Ferrari but going out to the shops in a Mini Cooper.
Still, this may have just been a teaser for where Halford would be heading later. He had already begun laying the finishing touches on his first proper solo album, Resurrection, and once fans got to hear him back in action, it wasn’t long before he started finding his disciples all over again when he returned to Priest for Angel of Retribution.
There are even a handful of tracks on Priest’s later albums that Halford may have picked up on from these sessions, like when he decided to flaunt his crooning chops again on tracks like ‘Sea of Red’ from 2018’s Firepower. Halford may not be the first person that comes to mind when talking about stoner rock, but his performance on ‘Feel Good Hit of the Summer’ is the number-one reason why gods don’t make mistakes.
