Fast-forward seven years, and the instant fame that came with the 2002 Dave Grohl collaboration Songs For The Deaf has faded, bad-boy Oliveri is gone, (his forced exit was chronicled in 2005's Lullabies To Paralyze), and life is different for sole proprietor Josh Homme, now a married man with a 1-year-old. More than anything else, Era Vulgaris reads like a reckoning with the changes.
Slower, moodier, and groggier than anything the group has done before, the album is reflective, questioning, self-deprecating, and critical. Everywhere the concept of consequences permeates the old-school amoralizing. "I'm a mess, I guess," Homme sings on the wonderfully Led Zeppelin-esque "Turnin On The Screw." "There is no safe place," he repeats on the pummeling "Run, Pig, Run." Ostensibly, it's a threat. But sung in chilling falsetto, it feels like an anti-self-affirmation.
Recorded with exactly zero input from Interscope Records, Era sounds like an effort to pull away from commercial radio and actually cultivate a smaller, indie-er fan base. At times, the approach backfires as a particularly curdled riff turns self-indulgent—witness the forced, mechanical-sounding "Battery Acid." And a few songs suffer from too many good ideas sandwiched into a conventional four-minute format. But where the band relaxes and settles into its dark groove, as on the haunting, Motown-ish "Make It Wit Chu," Era Vulgaris gets it just right.
