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Now that mainstream hard rock seems to be in its death throes, even a minor effort from a good hard rocker can seem exceptional simply because of the gaping dearth of quality releases. As a result, the new album by Queens of the Stone Age, Era Vulgaris (which doesn't mean what you probably think it means), may well go down as the best hard rock album of the year even if it falls short of the standard set by this still relatively young band. Frontman Josh Homme has been in the game long enough by now to have learned a few things, but that doesn't make his output any more streamlined or ponderous. He still cranks out all the vicious riffs and sleaze he can manage, but the band's more playful, winking side takes a hit this time around. Homme and crew are like depraved hedonists baked under the sun, nursing recently acquired STDs and recovering from a week-long hangover.

Performance-wise, they're still having plenty of fun, but by slowing things down, darkening the mood, and pushing the grooves to hard extremes found somewhere in the basement of whatever studio-of-the-damned they shambled together before recording, they don't always show it. By drifting from the good times, they seem to be seeking a smaller, more hardcore audience, but the album's tracklist plays mostly like really good B-sides that couldn't fit into earlier releases. True, there's a mostly consistent sound, but some of its bottom-feeding abandon smells like leftovers dressed up as first run main courses. For the first time ever, it actually requires a patient effort to wade through this mire on the first listen; return visits illuminate the goods. Lucky for us that along the way they manage more moments battling with swamp things and spotting naked chicks floating by in a bong-shaped canoe than time spent in venomous sludge and being sucked down to the bottom of the bog.

Despite being one of the album's best bets, "Make It Wit Chu" is like a fragmented amalgam of Motown and the Stones, and not really much like the rest of the record (fans will probably recognize it from a few years back when its fetal form was done by Desert Sessions, Homme's side project). The stuttering beat of "I'm Designer" is searching for a strong hook, but plods on as a good song that nevertheless fails to ever really grab hold and become great. The aptly named "Battery Acid" is (naturally) corrosive, and an unsuccessful plunge into a grinding, faux-industrial sound (contrast it with album highlight, "Misfit Love," to see how this approach can work well). Along with "Wit Chu" and "Love," immediate grabbers include the swerving groove of opener "Turning on the Screw," a Rated R-style mid-tempo scorcher called "Into the Hollow," and the delectably metallic filth of "Sick, Sick, Sick."

It's the band's most difficult record to date, a grim and grimy spectacle that rarely strikes right away, but it's easy to commit yourself to repeated listens where the good parts grow. At times, it seems to be borrowing from pages too close to Homme, though—there's a piece of a guitar riff in "Sick, Sick, Sick" that sounds a lot like a section of Songs-session drummer Dave Grohl's "All My Life"; he performs an obvious former-Grohl gig Nirvana lift on "3s & 7s"; when he says "run" in "Run Pig Run," it's delivered exactly the same as the chorus in Mastodon's "Colony of Birchmen" (Homme is a big fan of that group). These failings, as well as the second half filler ("River in the Road") that also marred Lullabies, make Era their least impressive effort since their debut. But just like when other all-time great hard rocking bands like Zeppelin (Presence), Pearl Jam (Binaural), the Who (The Who By Numbers), and Nine Inch Nails (With Teeth) follow up a string of stellar albums with one that's merely very good instead of great, it just feels worse by comparison. Is Era in the same league as the last three Queens albums? No. Is it worth seeking out, especially by fans? Definitely.

8 out of 10