Blues for the Red Sun

With Josh Homme feeding his guitar through a bass cabinet, Nick Oliveri digging his basslines deep enough to rattle the earth’s core, and John Garcia howling from some sun-scorched spot in the middle of the California desert, Kyuss’ second album married early grunge to late-’60s acid rock—planting the seed from which stoner rock sprouted. Gut-churning slabs of ultra-distorted, tripped-out sludge like “Thumb” and “Molten Universe” plow ahead like bulldozers reshaping the moon—picking up steam, sending meteors into orbit, and leaving craters in their wake.