... Like Clockwork (Matador) is the best and most focused Queens album since Songs for the Deaf in 2002. The drummer (Dave Grohl) and bassist (Nick Oliveri) on that album are back in part-time roles, and they help anchor what is one of the more consistent batch of songs Homme has authored.

The key is not just the band's ability to paralyze with power or to space out with stoner-rock psychedelia, but its willingness to infuse its melodies with vulnerability and a disquieting fragility."

Whatever happened — out there, in whatever desert arroyo, former meth lab, decommissioned missile silo, nuclear test site, underground laboratory, convergence of brain waves and gamma rays, QOTSA emerges with not only their best work to date, but one of the most ambitious, fully realized classic rock albums in recent memory.