THEM CROOKED VULTURES - REVIEW by Liberty Valance

“I know how to be lost in lust 
not because you should, but because you must, it burns white hot and so clouds the mind, 
its lightning strike isn't always kind…..
so use me up.”

This lyric sums up the way I felt about “Them Crooked Vultures”: loving them wasn’t so much a choice as is was a compulsion from the opening beat to the last. When I heard underground rumblings that Dave Grohl had mentioned he, Josh Homme, and John Paul Jones of former Led Zeppelin fame were getting together for a side project in early ’05, I nearly jumped out of my skin. As a huge Queens fan I had been patiently waiting almost a year for a new Queens album or the promised re-release and tour of the band’s self titled album. “Them Crooked Vultures” not only whet my appitite, but fully satisfied me and more.
The band has somehow managed to combine the overdriven guitars and haunting vocal styling of Josh, the almost roboticaly perfect hard hitting sound of Dave, and the funky heart stoping bass power of John, throw in a little Alain Johannes (a studio musician who co-wrote “Hanging Tree” from Queens “Songs for the Deaf” and played bass on “Lullabies to Paralyze”) for good measure, and you got a musical gumbo that Emeril Lagasse would be proud to call his own.
Now these guys are no strangers to sucesful “side projects”. John has been fairly low key in his post-Zeppelin days, playing a few festivals like Bonnaroo in ’07 and a few shows here and there with the Foo Fighters. Dave and Josh have been extremely productive in time away from their main” projects, playing in (between the two of them) bands like “Eagles of Death Metal”, “Probot”, “Nine Inch Nails”, ”The Prodigy”, and “The Desert Sessions”, so these guys know how to rock, and how!
Straight from the opening blues/funk inspired track “ No One Loves Me…” and the seemingly Queens inspired “New Fang” on through to the hauntingly Zeppelinesque “Gunman” and Burning hot organ solo of “Caligulove” and the dizzying (pardon the pun) orchestration of “Spinning in Daffodils”, this album starts off in a thundering stampede and finishes like a freight train dropkick to the face. If you’re a fan of anything these three musical titans have been involved with, go out and pick up “Them Crooked Vultures”, get a bottle of your favorite whiskey and be prepared to have a great time.

But until you hit your local liquor store, here's some TCV videos for you...

Mind Eraser, No Chaser


No One Loves Me And Neither Do I