I accidentally picked up the clean version of this album at a local superstore. I always open CDs as I leave the store and throw away all the wrapper stuff in the trash. I didn't realize that I had the clean version until I cracked the cellophane airlock.

The editing on this version of the album is a treat. All swear words are beeped out with a compressed, grating loud beep. Maybe that is par for the course, but I would hope not. It kind of seems like a joke the way they beeped out the swearing. Sort of a curse upon thee for buying the album from a superstore.

The clean version is not bad though. There really isn't that much objectionable material. Most of it is contained in "Six Shooter". I would recommend the explicit version for moral reasons, but you can't really go wrong with this one.

The rockin is hard. Not as heavy as the old Kyuss stuff. But the creepy melodicism of Queens more than makes up for it. "First It Giveth", "The Sky Is Fallin'", and "Hangin' Tree" are all better than "No One Knows"; but the format might be too long for radio. This isn't '72 after all. People can't be expected to listen to only one thing for more than 2.75 minutes.

If you are a fan of music and/or think Craig Killborn is a dish then this would be a great album for you.
Despite the advent of the '00s, thoroughly blunted longhairs wearing three-quarter-length T-shirts still boot around the suburbs in painted vans listening to roaring metal. Fittingly, a whole new crop of post-Dazed and Confused-era stoner rockers--Fu Manchu, Monster Magnet, and arguably the kings of them all, Queens of the Stone Age--provide a shredding contemporary score for righteous three-finger devil salutes. On Songs for the Deaf, core members bassist Nick Oliveri and singer-guitarist Josh Homme (also see Kyuss) balance pure guitar-induced carnage with more complex, though no less aggressive, speed rock that whips by so fast it creates its own breeze. Opening with the 90-second "The Real Song for the Deaf"--a cheeky and amorphous bit of bloopy electronica quite possibly recorded at the bottom of a swimming pool--the disc explodes with track two, a toxic squall of power chords and now-classic Olivera death howls. It's here the album's recurring concept/conceit is introduced as a generic-sounding announcer from L.A.'s "Clone" radio spits out some psychobabble reinforcing the tired if true cliché that commercial radio stinks. Similar mock broadcasts surface elsewhere, but they're easily forgivable, given the bounty on offer. Homme-powered tracks dominate--the lurching, weirdly springy "No One Knows" is a kind of "Monster Mash" for grownups; the vocal harmony-driven "The Sky Is Falling" is almost dreamy until a small army of guitars surges to the front lines to begin firing. And a lyrically winking hidden track, "Mosquito Song," is either an in-joke of ridiculous proportions or a declarative statement about the level of musicianship lurking just beneath the quaking veneer of the Queens' sound. Either way, genuine excitement comes early and often on Songs for the Deaf. It's a remarkable achievement--a hard rock record so good that it immediately evokes a conspiratorial fervor that makes you want to tell everyone you can about it. Er, job done. --Kim Hughes