Queens of the Stone Age

This is the band's debut album, released by Loosegroove Records on 22 September 1998, with Roadrunner handling it internationally and Man's Ruin pressing the vinyl. Josh Homme produced it and Joe Barresi engineered and mixed it. It was recorded between 3 and 21 April 1998 at Monkey Studios in Palm Desert and Rancho De La Luna in Joshua Tree. Homme made it after the end of Kyuss and played almost everything on it except the drums, which are Alfredo Hernandez's — he had been in Kyuss too. Chris Goss plays bass and sings on two tracks, and the closing "I Was a Teenage Hand Model" adds Fred Drake on drums and vocals, Patrick Hutchinson on piano and Dave Catching on percussion. The bass and keyboard credits go to "Carlo", which is Homme himself. Nick Oliveri had joined by the time it came out; he is in the photograph on the back cover and on the answering-machine message that closes the record. The sleeve photograph comes from the 1972 book The Pin-Up: A Modest History and shows the model Sylvia Bayo. Homme designed the packaging with the graphic artist Frank Kozik. AllMusic gave it four stars out of five, NME eight out of ten and Rolling Stone four out of five. Kitty Empire in NME wrote that the opening "Regular John" sounded "almost motorik, as though Neu! had level billing with [Black] Sabbath one strange night". The album was out of print for years until Homme reissued it in 2011 with three bonus tracks, which drew 78 on Metacritic and 8.0 from Pitchfork; a 2022 reissue restored the original configuration. It is the only Queens of the Stone Age album in 2010's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The eleven songs here are the original release's.