Every time I heard that Phototropic intro, I kept thinking "Man, I've heard this before.." It took me months to realise, and connect the dots. Personally I believe it was a homage to No Quarter by Led Zeppelin, at least the intro of Phototropic was. In early Queens of the Stone Age they kept this Stoner Rock element even though they were more going for a genre they dub 'Robot Rock'. They achieved this by making the riffs and drum beats very repetitive and machine like. Is an older QOSTA track which not all the people who know them, know. And it is closer to that Kyuss feel.
In parallel to the "Beaver" album, the "Queens of the Stone Age" album is filled with what they really call robot rock, hyper repetitive and discords and very cold singing that could make you think of some of the singers of the New/Dark Wave scene of the 80s. The Queens of the Stone Age: Queens of the Stone Age album for sure has some of my favorite tracks on there. It is important to know that back then QOSTA had 3 people and the Drummer was different and that Josh Homme wrote almost everything from vocals, guitar, synth and bass line. As far as I know Nick Oliveri only performed them when they went live, this doesn't mean he is any less bad-ass. Alfredo Hernandez only played on the Queens of the Stone Age album.. Here is a song that illustrates my point the most, from the album Queens of the Stone Age.
So earlier I hit the 80s thing, right? Many of you probably freaked out when I mentioned that era, but yes, there was actually good music from then incase you didn't know. I would like to suggest, that Devo, the robo-style rock band from the 80s inspired QOSTA in their Robot Rock genre. Yes Devo. Though they probably sound very different to your ears, I can hear some strong similarities in some of the riffs in some of their songs and for me, as a musician, that is enough to insinuate the possibility that Josh Homme listened to that band and liked how the guitar was played. Thus consciously or sub-consciously took inspiration from it. I could be wrong. But hey have a listen to this song, which I found in a South Park album, by Devo which sounds the most like QOSTA. Just listen to the guitar. The song I link after that is another Devo song that makes me think of QOSTA's I'm Designer and other really trippy-weird-genius songs and various other drum patterns you can hear through out all of QOSTA.
That was my lil rant on a cool band, Queens of the Stone Age. They surely took more inspirations from more music from different eras of the musical universe, but that is the stuff I could remember now. Maybe I will add to this post in future, but for now chill and enjoy QOSTA!
