Secrecy has been the way of the vulture in the last couple of months. Dave Grohl hinted on the project in late 2005 and in the summer of 2009 Jesse Hughes had a slip of the tongue on Canadian radio, which named the puppy. The world knew that the supergroup consisting of Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones would be known as Them Crooked Vultures. Completed by Alain Johannes the first show was at the Metro in Chicago, soon to be followed by a show in the Melkweg in Amsterdam and several festivalshows. Slowly but surely rumours about a releasedate for the album were spread, then the complete album (after some teasers) was put on youtube and today it finally happened. The selftitled debut album has hit the shelves in a store near you!
The album starts of easy with nice drums and a bluesy guitar riff, which have a great flow that keeps on going until 2 minutes and 40 seconds, than it just explodes and turns into a heavy grooving sound that will kick your ears in! What's really noticeable is the fullness of the sound on the entire record, this groove sets the tone for that dark sound. 'Mind Eraser, No Chaser' opens with a nice guitar riff (yet again!) and a second guitar playing through the riff making it somewhat controlled chaos, also because of the garage-like sound of the production., that turns into a real nice rock 'n' roll song with a weird vibe to it, compareable to songs like 'Misfit Love' on the 'Era Vulgaris'-album by
Queens Of The Stone Age.
'New Fang' is a good old dirty rocksong with great backing guitars and also that garage sound, we migt aswell call crooked from now on, which is also heard (with a sort of oriental twist to it) on 'Dead End Friends'. Running for coolest intro/guitarriff/druming intro and a whole lot of other prizes is 'Elephants', which rocks like fuck for a minute and then starts grooving like an old Camaro. For that matter, not totally unexpected though, the drumming on the album is fantastic, not just because of the skill, but it's just exactly right for this music. As off course is the bassplaying, if you don't believe me just check out 'Scumbag Blues'. The train keeps on rollin' until the weird 'Interlude With Ludes', which is best compareable to
QOTSA's 'I Used To Be A Teenage Handmodel'.
As you can see from this review, the musical style is best compared to
Queens Of The Stone Age, than to
Foo Fighters or
Led Zeppelin, but don't go expecting just
QOTSA on steroids, it is very different from it, but (probably because of the vocals) it is just closest to this one of the three bands that the members are wellknown for. After the kind of happy sounding 'Warsaw Or The First Breath After You Give Up', which has a fantastic mid section that is ripe for liveshows and improvs, the dark and macabre 'Caligulove' trips on through the speakers. Highlight on the album is the asskicking song called 'Gunman'. The driving drums on this track are fan-fucking-tastic!! The album reaches it end with the lovely strange 'Spinning In Daffodils'.
Almost everything about this album is great. All the songs, the way the songs are arranged, the buildup of the album are great and there is not a second on this record that will bore a true believer. If you're into any of the bands that the members are or were in, just go get this record and be ashamed that you haven't got it already.
Josh...
Dave...
John...thank you so much...
