“I never really listened to metal”: the metal band Josh Homme never bothered listening to
As the frontman and principal songwriter of Queens of the Stone Age, Josh Homme has become something of a poster boy for the modern stoner rock movement but has also managed to dip his toes into various other strands of rock music along the way. Fusing together elements of desert rock, alternative grunge sounds and metal into the band’s sound, Homme has never kept his project firmly in one lane, and this is what has helped make them such an evergreen act that continues to push boundaries with each release.
However, prior to releasing classic albums in the early 2000s, such as Rated R and Songs For The Deaf, alongside a revolving cast of bandmates, Homme was also an instrumental figure in Kyuss, another stoner rock and metal act from Palm Desert, California. Kyuss featured vocalist John Garcia and his future QOTSA bandmates Nick Oliveri and Alfredo Hernández, among others.
Albums such as Welcome to Sky Valley and Blues for the Red Sun were celebrated for their blend of heavy psychedelic sounds and slow, metal-influenced riffs. Far heavier than anything Homme would ever release with QOTSA or his extra-curricular projects such as Them Crooked Vultures or Eagles of Death Metal, Kyuss were a beastly combination of sludgy riffs and an all-out onslaught of noise.
Arriving at a similar time to acts like Melvins and the Jesus Lizard and inspiring future acts such as Sleep and Electric Wizard, it would be easy to pin Kyuss down as being not only an important beacon within the alternative metal community of the 1990s and beyond but also having had a healthy dose of influence from bands that came before them. Among the forefathers of the heavy metal sound in the 1970s were Black Sabbath, and there are distinct similarities between the aggression shown by the iconic Birmingham band and their Californian counterparts decades later.
However, if you were to ask Homme about how important Black Sabbath were to him on a personal level of influence, you might be surprised to hear that during his time with Kyuss, they were rarely ever thought about as a significant touchstone for the band’s sound. Rather, his influences when it came to writing riffs that would go on to be used in Kyuss’ material were taking far more inspiration from other heavy genres and weren’t as indebted to the likes of Sabbath as one might think.
“I never really listened to metal,” Homme confessed in a 2003 interview with Spin. “When I was in Kyuss, people assumed we were into Black Sabbath, but I hadn’t really heard those bands.” When he chose to elaborate on what was instead influential to his guitar sound, he revealed that “I followed the punk-rock-guilt rules–you can’t listen to anything else. I wanted to be able to claim that I’d never heard the music that supposedly influenced me.”
Taking more cues from the likes of Black Flag, The Stooges and The Descendents, Homme’s punk-influenced guitar sound was ultimately distorted to a greater degree than these precursors ever chose to deliver. However, in doing so, Kyuss ultimately found themselves landing in the same bracket as the heavy metal bands that came before them and helped to breathe new life into the genre throughout the 1990s – whether it was their intention or not.
