“Leg of Lamb” is a structure-less song with a slippery, sloppy guitar solo in the middle of dueling guitars that sound like car alarms panned left and right. Pushing the boundaries was key for the musical commune of talent on Rated R, and Goss told XFM that “every song had to change up.” The bizarre is the only consistent element across the album. Rated R is the starting point for Homme’s prodding mission, written in a Joshua Tree, California, bungalow with then-bassist/singer Nick Oliveri and recorded with Chris Goss and a handful of guests like Halford, Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan and drummer Gene Trautmann, among others. “I want to represent something beautifully deranged and damn near god-awful.” “The goal has been to agitate,” Homme said in a 2017 interview in Dublin. “Nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol…c-c-c-c-c-cocaine,” Homme sings on the opening track, “Feel Good Hit of the Summer.” Is it an anthem? A band rider? A rock ‘n’ roll cocktail that Judas Priest singer Rob Halford claims to have invented before singing on the track? Therein lies the power of Rated R, an album that knows saying “fuck” 46 times in a song isn’t as memorable as the neon blue attached to the MPAA rating, R: “Restricted, to everyone, everywhere, all the time.” The designation plays on social norms, making it an automatic forbidden fruit. Kid Rock might have put a picture of a middle finger on the Devil Without a Cause CD, but he would never enter a room, rifle off a list of drugs in a crowded room and let it sit, without connotation or annotation. Still, for all the parental advisory labels, nu-metal was never dangerous. Legacy acts like Pantera, AC/DC, Smashing Pumpkins and Oasis tried to make some noise during “The Return of the Rock” era, and they weren’t as successful as the dominant, ADIDAS-clad bros. Looking outside the top-selling albums of the year, rock in 2000 was either alternative sounds that mainstream audiences weren’t quite ready to embrace (Ween’s White Pepper, Deftones’ White Pony or Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica ), or platinum-plus-selling nu-metal (Disturbed The Sickness, Papa Roach’s Infest, and Limp Bizkit’s Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water ). Santana cleaned up at the Grammys, with the help from Matchbox 20’s Rob Thomas, Everlast, and Eagle Eye Cherry.
#INCUBUS BAND PARENTAL ADVISORY FULL#
Eminem released his second album, The Marshall Mathers LP, complete with odes to Em’s ex-wife “Kim” and “Kill You.” Rock music was just as full of MTV-approved acts like Kid Rock aping Metallica’s “Sad But True” on the single “American Badass.” Creed re-introduced Christianity to metal with its multi-platinum Human Clay. N*SYNC and Britney Spears were flirting with losing virginity while ruling the pop charts. We wanted to be the antithesis of all other bands.”Ī casual look at the “2000 in music” Wiki page, you’ll notice how out of place Queens of the Stone Age was. It’s about the search for something that sounded great, no matter where it was. “I wanted to do the exact opposite - no rules. “Kyuss had rules…religion,” Homme said in 2007. In the 20 years since the album’s release, Rated R is a blueprint for the band’s future success, a calling card and warning sign that says this band will regularly defy expectations. It was unlike anything filed under rock music at the time, and that’s why it stood out then. Rated R is not only weird it’s dark, hilarious, furious and beautiful.