Cantankerous Head-Bangers, and Proud of It

For those disgruntled head-bangers (you know who you are) who have given up on metal as a genre capable of producing music both cathartic and fresh, take heart: Queens of the Stone Age feel your pain.

Emerging from the ashes of Kyuss, one of the great heavy ensembles of the early ‘90s, the group has an arsenal of great riffs, a warped worldview and the versatility to roam across a wide musical expanse.

Oh, yeah--and lots of cantankerous attitude.

“It’s hard for me not to walk out and say, ‘Hey, kids, we’re gonna play for you and we don’t give a [expletive] if you like it or not,’ ” says singer-guitarist Joshua Homme, 27. “Luckily for me, I like hecklers in those situations. I’ll take total hatred or idolatry, but I don’t want just a casual crowd. I hate complacency.”

Queens of the Stone Age have been playing for rowdy crowds on the current OZZfest tour (which comes to Southern California on Sept. 2) since the beginning of July, slogging it out at the bottom of the main-stage bill for sunbaked metal fans waiting impatiently for headliners Pantera, Godsmack, Static-X and Ozzy Osbourne--a situation that Homme finds both a blessing and a curse.

“It has its moments of pure, utter joy. There’s a lot of Budweiser around, and I get to see Ozzy play every night. But I also get sunburned to the ultimate degree.”

But context is everything. The OZZfest gig is, in fact, a rung up on the career ladder for Queens, whose second album, “R,” is its first for a major label, Interscope. “We’ve always had this thing of ‘Give us the money and I’ll give you the record,’ ” says Homme. “I like being on Interscope, ‘cause they work at the speed we work, which is fast.”

“I just don’t think there’s anyone else out there like them right now,” says Interscope artists and repertoire executive Debbie Southwood-Smith, who signed Queens of the Stone Age to the label. “The music is intelligent, sexy and still heavy, but it’s not lowest-common-denominator. I’ve had musicians say they listened to it once, didn’t love it, then went back to it, and now love it and play it all the time. Those are the kind of records that stay with you forever.”

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The band--essentially Homme and bassist Nick Oliveri, 28, who bring supporting players in and out of the lineup--hails from the parched terrain of Palm Desert. They sneaked up on a lot of listeners with their self-titled 1998 debut, a tsunami of elegant thrash that established the band as a master of musical economy--nothing is extraneous, and everything counts.

“R”--as in the movie rating--both refines and improves on the first album, adding elements of glam-rock and garage psychedelia to its vacuum-packed stoner metal.

“On this record, we understand now what the word ‘influence’ means,” says Homme. “When you listen to something and love it, you think, ‘They can do it, why can’t we?’ ”

At a time when flouting taboos is becoming risky business for pop artists, Queens of the Stone Age flash unseemly obsessions as gleeful exhibitionists would. The album’s leadoff track, “Feel Good Hit of the Summer,” cracks a militant riff like a leather whip over a laundry list of mind-bending substances: “Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol.”

But unlike, say, Eminem, “Feel Good” avoids malice in favor of a healthy respect for hedonism. “The song is like a social experiment,” Homme says. “How do people react when you say things that are uncomfortable? The song will be censored, but there isn’t a single curse word in it. I just want to hang it out there and leave it for the court of public opinion to decide.”

What about the controversy created by such albums as Eminem’s “The Marshall Mathers LP”?

“You know, it’s really tough,” Homme says. “I don’t feel any obligation to the kids as far as content goes. Making a really big deal out of something makes the biggest impact. It’s like when the Republicans jumped all over [Ice-T’s song] ‘Cop Killer.’ They took it to such an extreme that it was as if they were using it for their own ends as much as Ice-T was.”

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Queens of the Stone Age--whose current touring lineup also includes drummer Gene Trautmann and guitarist-keyboardist Brendon McNichol--are capable of pure extremism, but can also knot together songs from a wellspring of shadings and sonics.

Homme was weaned on the music his parents played him--”Jackson Browne, the Doors and even Kenny Rogers, for God’s sake”--and ‘80s hard-core punk from bands such as the Subhumans, the Misfits and Black Flag: “Stuff I studied religiously. That’s the music that made me want to play.”

Homme insinuated himself into Palm Springs’ tiny punk scene as a teenager, playing in various bands and eventually forming Kyuss in 1989 with bassist Oliveri, singer John Garcia and drummer Brant Bjork.

“Palm Desert was insulated to the point of suffocation,” says Homme. “I don’t think I ever disliked it. It took me years to think that if I stayed, I would be put in jeopardy. The easy-living part of it has a certain appeal, but it’s not good for someone in their 20s to be living like a retiree.”

Kyuss quickly gained a reputation for its purity of intention, bashing out distended fuzz-tone riffs at lumbering tempos. But after four albums and three EPs--all but one of the recordings for Elektra Records--Homme began to chafe at what he perceived as Kyuss’ metal orthodoxy. He left the band in 1994.

“I moved to Seattle to quit playing music,” says Homme, who eventually gathered some Seattle musicians, including Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron, Screaming Trees’ Van Conner and Dinosaur Jr.’s Matt Johnson, to make what became a series of singles under the name Gamma Ray. That project eventually morphed into Queens of the Stone Age, a band that refuses to concede an inch to the rap-rock counterrevolution, opting instead for a sound that’s hard-wired into the circuitry of Homme’s restless, fecund brain.

“I really feel like we’re lone-wolfing it,” says Homme, who has moved back to L.A. “We’re not safety-pinned to any one genre, so for me, I feel comfortable walking around the edge of the pack.”

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Queens of the Stone Age play at OZZfest, Sept. 2 at Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion, 2575 Glen Helen Parkway, Devore, 10 a.m. $22.250-$65.25. (909) 886-8742.