Kyuss

• Genre: Stoner Rock
• Hometown: Palm Desert
• Kyuss Website

About

Along with San Jose, California's Sleep, Kyuss set down the blueprint for stoner rock, with a groovier, more alternative rock-influenced take on Sabbath than their classically-obsessed brethren to the north. Formed in Palm Desert, California in 1990 by guitarist Josh Homme, bassist Nick Oliveri, drummer Brant Bjork and singer John Garcia, the band quickly gained a following on the strength of their raging live performances and second record, Blues For The Red Sun, which was produced by Chris Goss of Masters Of Reality. Kyuss' magnum opus, Welcome To Sky Valley followed, a record in which they took their once somewhat tightly structured groove-rock songs and smashed them together into extended, multipart, super-heavy psyche-metal jams. The guitar sound itself on the first three minutes of that record sums up late '90s stoner rock -- a warm blanket of distortion with unheard of amounts, yet precisely controlled fuzz with a slightly muffled feel. Personal differences beset the band early on and by the release of And The Circus leaves Town in 1995, Kyuss had called it quits for good. Homme went on to form Queens Of The Stone Age with Oliveri.

- Mike McGuirk