Six years of quiet has a way of letting some of the neon glow out of a band. So it's been for Queens of the Stone Age, the musical Megatron composed of members of Kyuss, Soundgarden and Screaming Trees, plus an extended residency from Dave Grohl. QotSA has spent the six years since 2007's "Era Vulgaris" in recycle mode, re-issuing their self-titled debut and "Rated R," and touring them for a couple years in the interim. There was some splintering; lead singer Josh Homme joined Them Crooked Vultures, Dean Fertita joined Jack White's Dead Weather and drummer Joey Castillo left the band.
But, if the likes of My Bloody Valentine and Suede have shown anything thus far in 2013, it's that old dogs still have plenty of potential for new tricks. Whether those tricks turn out to be any good, well, that's far from a sure thing.
One personal knock against QotSA that I've held is I often found a lot of their tracks indistinguishable from the next. There was a sleepiness around their brand of metal that I found hard to full enjoy or become enveloped in. Still, I felt I owed it to my curiosity to investigate "...Like Clockwork," and I can't say I'm emerging on the other side all that disappointed.
There's a bit of the woozy-metal feel to opener "Keep Your Eyes Peeled," but it's mitigated with a few jolts - think of a "kick," a la "Inception" - of guitar and tempo shift that scrape some of the sleep off the tracks eyes. And it stays awake for a few tracks. New drummer Jon Theodore's straightforward percussion keeps "I Sat By the Ocean" moving, while the slow cook of "The Vampyre of Time and Memory" may slow the fuse's burn, but doesn't interrupt it.
Middle tracks "My God is the Sun" and the guest-laden (Elton John??) "Fairweather Friends" are the album's stand-outs, powerful, anthemic (by QotSA standards) tracks that seem to put the band's members at their best throughout. And the antithetical, grimy shuffle of "Smooth Sailing" punctuates the album's strongest stretch. Unfortunately, the 11 1/2 minutes of the album's final two tracks do little to carry on the momentum, with "I Appear Missing" tending to meander and bury an otherwise interesting guitar hook and the title track closer, a brooding piano ballad that leads into a swirl of guitars that tries to climax but never quite gets there, feeling out of place.
Fans of the band's more traditional stylings should leave feeling satisfied. "Clockwork" is a good mix of old and new, but it feels lacking in ambition and seems to fall short of whatever bar it has set, as if it wanted to be more and just couldn't quite reach the summit.
Grade: 7.75/10
