"THE GREATEST STONER/ GARAGE/ PSYCHEDELIC/ PUNK/ METAL BAND EVER. THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN HUGE."
PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on CD package design for the KYUSS/ QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE split release, artwork by the late, great Frank Kozik (1962-2023), issued under the legendary Man's Ruin Records (Man's Ruin MR 063) in 1997.
OVERVIEW: "Emerging wild-eyed and stoned from the desert surrounding Palm Springs, California, in 1992 with their classic second album "Blues for the Red Sun," KYUSS proceeded over the ensuing three years and through two further masterpieces to become the greatest stoner/ garage/ psychedelic/ punk/ metal band ever. They should have been huge.
But saddled with a record company that didn't have the first idea what to do with them, KYUSS only sold records to friends, family and a relatively minuscule band of diehard fans. So they split. Admittedley at a creative high point, but also at a time when they had so much to offer. This much is testified to by the first three tracks on "Queens of the Stone Age." Here are the last songs Kyuss recorded, all first released on a highly-prized 10-inch single and each encapsulating the hypnotic intensity and gargantuan blugeon the band summarily conjured up.
The first track is a frazzled eight-minute deconstruction of BLACK SABBATH's "Into the Void'. KYUSS remain one of the very few bands capable of doing Sabbath's black-hearted doom justice; accomplised in this instance by taking the original tracks prehistoric slurge of a riff and dragging it through a series of skewed rhythmic shifts and a long spaced-out jam.
Like all great bands, KYUSS' sound was utterly distinctive: essentially, Josh Homme's fuzzed-up guitar operating in tandem with Scott Reeder's monstrous bass rumble to create riffs that hit you with the force of a bulldozer to the chest, while singer John Garcia howled away impressively, and intermittently, over the top. All of this is contained in the two-part "Fatso Forgotso" -- a vast 10-minute expanse of soul-drenched, head-spinning rolling thunder.
The album is completed by three tracks from Homme's new band, QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE. These too are extraordinary. The music is still dense, trippy and relentlessly heavy, with an even more extreme psychedelic edge. On "If Only Everything" and "Born to Hula." Homme -' who also sings -- appears to be playing a sitar with a road drill, while the whacked-out instumental "Spiders and Vinegaroons" is clearly the work of a man who's imbibed a vast amount of mind-altering substances, and gone mad. We'll not see their like again."
-- "KERRANG!" (review by Paul Rees), published January 10th 1998.
Source: https://mikeladano.com/2023/09/26/review-kyuss-queens-of-the-stone-age-1997-split-ep & discogs.