Recent talk of the possibility of a new Queens of the Stone Age album before the end of 2011 has me certifiably giddy. I’m a big fan of lead-Queen Josh Homme’s side project Them Crooked Vultures, and their 2009 self-titled LP spent some serious time on my turntable. So, I suppose that has helped to tide me over.

But the Queens were so prolific for so long – they never went more than about two years between albums since they released their debut – that I’ve been hardwired to expect new music from them on a consistent basis. Now it’s been four years since they dropped their last LP, Era Vulgaris, and I’m going through withdrawals.

So maybe that’s why I’ve been obsessively rediscovering Era Vulgaris so much as of late. When the album came out in 2007, I listened to it quite a bit, but for one reason or another I never fully gave myself over to it. I liked it a lot; I just didn’t leave it in my car stereo for a year straight.

Fast-forward to 2011, and it’s one of the three albums I need to have within arm’s reach while I’m driving, lest I feel uneasy. I need to know I can reach for it, find it, and have it tunneling itself into my ear holes within seconds of the need arising. (I have it on my iPod, but I keep a CD copy on hand just in case. It’s a sad state of affairs.)

In large part, this is due to my seemingly unending love for the first track on the album, the densely layered – and awesomely unconventional – “Turnin’ On the Screw”. I don’t want to say that it’s radically unlike any other Queens of the Stone Age song, because the band has a history of exploring way more sonic ground than they’ve ever received credit for, and it’s not like this tune suddenly finds them unrecognizably genre-switching. It’s clearly Queens of the Stone Age.

Queens of the Stone Age – Turnin’ on the Screw

But there’s something gut-wrenchingly exciting about it, and it seems to stem from the band consciously exiting their comfort zone.

The reason I want to talk about it here is that, while it’s on the most base level a bludgeoning rock song, it’s also a track that demands to be listened to on headphones so you can really appreciate how well the band uses stereo mixing to add incredible texture to its many different sections.

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If you’ve been working on the Frequency Fundamentals series here at EasyEarTraining.com, you may be looking for a way to practice the skills it teaches. Fotios has created a special quiz for the first half of the series, covering drums and cymbals.

The Frequency Fundamentals course takes you from the most basic concepts, through to a working knowledge of the 10 core frequency bands which cover the human hearing range. The following two articles use sounds from a standard drum kit to get you started listening for frequencies:
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