Them Crooked Vultures?

Recently, I've seen the name Them Crooked Vultures tossed around almost everywhere, trending on Twitter nearly every day for the past week, on the front page of Reddit, and referenced on Blabbermouth and every other music-related sites I frequent. Generally, massively popular bands who I've never heard of generally end up being silly pop bands, so I promptly ignored it and moved on.

 A few days later I finally looked into it, and it seems counting them out was a rather large mistake.

Them Crooked Vultures is not only a new band, but a serious supergroup the likes of which we haven't seen in a while. The Vultures are also a power trio, with guitar and vocal duties filled by Queens of the Stone Age veteran Josh Homme, drums by the Foo Fighters guitarist/frontman Dave Grohl (who is admittedly is a bit more famous as the drummer for Nirvana) rounded out by one of the most legendary bassists of all time, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin.

The music proves the Vultures are more than huge names and uncomfortable images of anthropomorphized birds, and sports a very fresh, modern feel with heavy allusions to the music from all members' collective pasts. To promote the release, they decided to stream the entire album on their website, so you can check it out for yourself right now. I recommend listening to at least out Mind Eraser (No Chaser) (which is somewhat grungy), Scumbag Blues (which sounds like a modern Cream song), New Fang (laid back, bluesy-rock)  or Elephants (which feels most like modern alternative) or before casting judgment.

The album drops next week (vinyl in December), but you can preorder it now.