Homme sweet Homme (continued)

Although Homme doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks of Lullabies, it’s obvious from the first single, "Little Sister," that this Queens line-up can hang with anyone, anytime, anywhere. Drummer Joey Castillo and multi-instrumentalists Troy Van Leeuwen and Alain Johannes (with occasional contributions from former Screaming Trees vocalist Mark Lanegan) ably handle the psychedelic stoner vibe of "I Never Came" and the ghostly "Burn the Witch" (which features vocals and lead guitar by ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons) as well as the discomforting heart-of-darkness epics "Someone’s in the Wolf" and "The Blood Is Love." With its surging riffs and ghoulish chorus, "Everybody Knows That You’re Insane" wouldn’t be out of place on Songs from the Deaf. "Little Sister," on the other hand, is a one-take performance that sounds more like a Moby-Grape-meets-Devo hybrid then a trad Queens tune. With everything from sweet reveries to smack-down thumpers, along with touches of orchestral experimentation, Lullabies To Paralyze is too expansive to be Songs for the Deaf II. And though the guitars still growl and squeal, the groove factor is different.

"When it came to Songs for the Deaf," Homme recalls, "Dave Grohl had such a great understanding of song and how repetition creates that trancelike environment. Dave and I had agreed that we would find these moments where he would really cut loose and then we would return to the trance so that it wasn’t going nuts all of the time. For Lullabies, Joey and I wanted to go back to the earlier Queens kind of trance, where it is not about showing off. Joey can do what Dave can do — they are in that category where no one is better than the other person. So it became more song-oriented and just laying down the trance and going for that repetition thing."

That repetition thing, though lighter in style and substance than on Songs for the Deaf, is what holds the album together. "Everybody Knows That You Are Insane," "Someone’s in the Wolf," and "The Blood Is Love" are all about hypnosis, mind locks, and instrumental precision. Repetition saturates Lullabies like a recurring nightmare.

"It builds a lot of tension to hold on to something until you are used to hearing it repeat, repeat, then you make the smallest change and it really becomes a massive change," Homme says. "It ends up being more about what you did not play as opposed to what you did. When musicians are kind of insecure, they try to show off — it’s much more difficult to play one note than it is to play 50. As a kid, I loved blues players, and that wasn’t about soloing, it was about making one note sing like a vocal melody. When I first started to do Queens, in 1997, it was about playing a succinct, completed thought. I was doing this trance stuff and a friend turned me on to Can and Brian Eno and [Iggy Pop’s] The Idiot, and I saw similarities in what I was starting to do and what they’d already done."

And for all the talk of Nick Oliveri being the real stoner in Queens of the Stone Age, his loss hasn’t affected the band’s musical sensibility.

"One of the things that I had heard from people early on," Homme contends, "is that Nick is the hard, aggressive inner core of the band and now it’s going to be all mellow. But this is the record that needed to get made now. I know that we could have come off like Slayer. But it was more important to play songs like ‘I Never Came’ and ‘Long Slow Goodbye’ despite what Joe Shit the rack man might think.

"And Nick is not with us today. But that is not because of his hard partying. I still do what I always did. I have a good time and I am not a slave to any drug. That is what is more important, that you do something and it doesn’t control you. You use it before it starts using you back. I am still on the same program, which is do a little bit of everything all the time."

Homme is as unapologetic about the new album as he is about his lifestyle. "There is nothing that I would change about the album. Music is very selfish and masturbatorial. It’s selfish for the listener, for the maker, for everyone. So it needs to start with us, something that we are very passionate about making and wanting to listen to. That way, it’s a success when we’re done. The other factors: getting nine stars out of 10 or selling tons of records, those aren’t up to me."

He is, however, a little defensive when it comes to people saying that Lullabies is a "mellow" album. "People think heavy means distortion and I think it is delivery. I grew up playing parties, and so the necessity for groove was pounded into my brain. If you are going to party, you need to groove. A lot of the desert bands were really slinky, and that has always been a desire of mine. How to be sweet enough for the chicks and tough enough for the dudes at the same time? I would rather the chicks get into heavy music than me playing to a bunch of dudes all the time."

So it’s lullabies for chicks that also paralyze the dudes?

"Yes. For Queens of the Stone Age."

Queens of the Stone Age play an officially sold-out show (617-931-2000) this Monday, March 28, at the Roxy, 279 Tremont Street in the Theater District.