Kyuss

My never ending quest for new music continues...


One of my favorite bands is Queens of the Stone Age. Recently, I heard that they were an offshoot of a lesser known band from the early 90's called "Kyuss." As I often do with bands, I did plenty of research about them. They have quite a strong cult following and most people who know who they are surprised that they weren't more popular. After hearing a lot of buzz about them, I started to look around for some of their albums at libraries and music stores. I have yet to find a real copy of some of their work, that is how unknown they are. I then returned to the 21st century and just logged on to iTunes and bought their greatest hits album and burned it onto a CD. If you don't already know, I do 90% of all my music listening in the car, and I only have a CD player.

One of the interesting things about their sound is how heavy it is without it being metal. One of the main reasons for that is how the guitarist tunes his guitar. Normally, the top string on a guitar is an E. He tunes it down to a C, and the rest of the string accordingly. First of all, that gives the strings more slack giving it a more loose sound, and it also makes the lowest note he can play 5 steps lower.

I actually heard Kyuss before I thought I had. On a video game that I was playing (Need for speed) one of the in-game tracks intrigued me, I hadn't heard anything quite like that before. It was really heavy sounding, but it definitely wasn't metal. Unfortunately, the name of the song wasn't listed so I just assumed that it was just a really good song that happened to be pre-made for a video game. Later, when I bought Kyuss's greatest hits album, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that song, which is entitled "Hurricane."

Kyuss's focus is more on the musical portion than the lyrical and vocal parts of a song. A good portion of their songs are instrumental, and the vocals are sparse on the tracks that do feature singing. The vocals are almost like another instrument in the mix with Kyuss. I've heard their vocals described as "paint-stripping," much like the rest of their music.

I should also add that I've heard that their greatest hits is actually missing a lot of their better songs, and that you would be better off picking up their albums "Blues for the Red Sun" or "Sky Valley." When I have the extra cash, I will definitely pick one, if not both of these albums.

Overall, If you are looking for something different, I would recommend checking out Kyuss. They aren't the greatest thing I've ever heard, but their definitely a long shot from the worst, and worth checking out.

Tracks to check out:
-Hurricane
-50 million year trip
-Un Sandpiper