Friday, October 4, 2013

#66 - Kyuss


In the early 1990s, Kyuss defined and perfected the rock sound of the desert of Southern California.  While Seattle was flipping the bird to the world and perhaps more directly to the increasingly superficial music industry with the rise of grunge, Palm Desert was raising its own middle finger, but this one was dirtier under the nail, permanently bent at the knuckle and with skin leathery as hell.  Kyuss' sound, and the genre of stoner rock that it helped spawn, captured the disconnected, disenfranchised sentiment of the grunge movement, but without the malaise.  Instead, they opted alternately for an intense slow burn or a driving edge, with just a dash of imperfection to drive home the take-it-or-leave-it aesthetic.  These guys were so talented, authentic and musically convincing that after their breakup in 1995, they went on to participate in many more bands that left a mark on rock music, most notably guitarist Josh Homme and his later band Queens of the Stone Age.


When I think of definitive driving-on-the-highway tunes, a handful come to mind: "Breaking the Law" by Judas Priest, "Highway Star" by Deep Purple, Corrosion of Conformity's "Clean My Wounds" (which we heard earlier) and this gem off of Kyuss' album Blues for the Red Sun.  "Green Machine" is a tight little song with a great riff and an incredible groove.  There are some cool details like the stuttering entrance of the second guitar at the beginning and the fuzzy tube amp sound that make the song work so perfectly, and the backing vocals are spot on.  Here, Kyuss shows why they're so highly regarded and why legions of stoner rock bands followed their lead.

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