YMMV / Queens of the Stone Age

• Awesome Music: Enough to garner its own page.
• Award Snub: Many people did not take kindly to the band losing the "Best Rock Performance" Grammy to Imagine Dragons. Josh Homme even lampshaded this during a live performance soon after, jokingly announcing that he was performing an Imagine Dragons cover. Needless to say, the audience was not amused by this.
• Broken Base: When the audio for "The Way You Used to Do" was released, the fanbase was pretty split on it, mostly because it was the first available song from Villains and it was very different from their other stuff. The fanbase mostly solidified again by the time the album released.
  • Era Vulgaris is pretty divisive, with opinions ranging from "a typically solid Queens of the Stone Age record" to "a major low point in an otherwise stellar discography." This is mostly due to the album's less mainstream and oddly mechanical/industrial sound. It doesn't help that the fan favorite Title Track was omitted from the final album and, instead, released as a B-side.
• Covered Up:
  • I'm going out west, where the wind blows tall... from "Goin' Out West" by Tom Waits from Bone Machine.
  • The songs "Avon", "Monsters in the Parasol"^note under the title "Monster in the Parasol", "You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, but I Feel like a Millionaire", "Like a Drug", "Hangin' Tree"^note under the title "Hanging Tree", "Make It wit Chu"^note under the title "I Wanna Make It wit Chu" and "In My Head"^note under the title "In My Head...or Something" were all originally performed by The Desert Sessions. Though The Desert Sessions was also founded by Josh Homme, the Queens of the Stone Age versions are better known. On the flipside, the Desert Sessions version of "Rickshaw" is far more popular than the original 1996 Gamma Ray^* the original name for QOTSA, which wasn't kept for obvious reasons demo.
• Critical Dissonance: Era Vulgaris received solid critical reviews but a very mixed reaction from fans (see Broken Base above). A little after release, a few of the critics that gave it rave reviews even retracted said praise, feeling they were simply riding on the momentum the band established with their previous three albums^note Rolling Stone, for example, gave the album a four star review but later chose to not include it in their list of the "50 Best Albums Of 2007". Fortunately, over time, the record gained further appreciation among fans (see Vindicated by History below).
• Ending Fatigue: "I Think I Lost My Headache" ends on about three minutes of horns repeating the same riff over and over, taking the total length of the song up to 8:40, which is about three minutes too long. And on top of that, it doesn't even end.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: "You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, but I Feel Like a Millionaire" is one of the most popular songs on Songs for the Deaf^note it probably helps that Nick Oliveri does a pretty good Metal Scream, even being featured in Tony Hawk's Underground, but was never released as a single.
  • "Smooth Sailing" is the most popular song on ...Like Clockwork , and being made a single only helped the song.
  • Basically the entire first album. Until the reissue, it was extremely difficult to find, but is extremely popular in the fandom and contains classic tracks like "Mexicola", "Regular John", "Walkin' on the Sidewalks", "How to Handle a Rope", and "You Can't Quit Me Baby".
  • As for band members:
    • Nick Oliveri, known for playing naked on stage, being a druggie, a wife beater, and many other bad things.
    • Troy Van Leeuwen is also fairly well known. It helps that he's a Tall, Dark, and Handsome Sharp-Dressed Man.
    • Joey Castillo, while commonly seen as a Replacement Scrappy due to having to live up to Dave Grohl, many found his crazy fast drumming style to be appealing.
    • Jon Theodore, though that's what happens when you hire the guy from The Mars Volta to drum for you.
    • Michael Shuman is pretty popular, but he's mostly only known as "that bassist with the horrifying scream".
• Epileptic Trees: Every song is about Nick Oliveri. Yes, even "Make It wit Chu" and "Skin on Skin".
• Fandom Rivalry: QOTSA fans outright despise Imagine Dragons due to the Grammy incident (see Award Snub above).
• Friendly Fandoms: With Nine Inch Nails, which is helped by Josh Homme and Trent Reznor being friends and both having collaborated more than once.
  • In 2014 the bands have embarked on a joint tour where they decided who will perform first by the toss of a coin.
  • Also with Arctic Monkeys fans, due in no small part to Josh's close kinship with the band.
• More Popular Spin Off: Of Kyuss.
• Signature Song: "Feel Good Hit Of The Summer" and "The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret" from Rated R, along with "No One Knows" and "Go with the Flow" from Songs for the Deaf, are their most recognizable songs, with "Regular John", "Little Sister", "3's & 7's", "My God Is the Sun", "I Sat by the Ocean", and to a lesser extent, "The Way You Used to Do" not far behind.
• Tear Jerker: "I Appear Missing," which seems to be about Josh Homme's near-death experience and ensuing four-month bedridden depression during the recording of ...Like Clockwork.
  • "How to Handle a Rope", despite being freaking awesome the lyrics are seriously depressing.
  • Their cover of "Christian Brothers," like Elliott Smith's original.
  • "In the Fade" is this in a much more existential manner. Despite our attempts to hold onto life, we cannot. In the end we all die, and we just have to accept it. We have to just, as the song says "Live till you die". Unfortunately this is mitigated by the track ending on (well, fading into, actually) a reprise of "Feel Good Hit of the Summer"...
• Values Dissonance: The R&B influenced "Make It Wit Chu" is a song that wouldn't go over well if it were released today, due to society now being much more sensitive towards things like cultural appropriation than in 2007. Particularly, the song's title and Josh's attempt at sounding like a black R&B singer in the chorus would likely be seen as racially insensitive today.
• Vindicated by History: Era Vulgaris has gotten this, somewhat. The album was, for a long time, seen as the weakest Queens record, with criticisms ranging from its bizarre mix of rock and industrial to having tired/bland songs. Over time, however, a number of fans have grown to appreciate its weird and disjointed style. And, though still considered to be among the weaker records in the QOTSA discography, it's certainly more appreciated now than it was upon release.