Era Vulgaris by Queens Of The Stone Age (CD, Jun-2007, Interscope Records USA)

I often wonder why record labels are constantly using market differentiation strategies depending on where and how the product is sold. Believe it or not, the Brazilian version for the download of "Era Vulgaris" contains three more songs than the CD and two more than the iTunes versions. These songs are named "Running Joke" (available on iTunes), "Era Vulgaris" (also available on the British CD) and "The Fun Machine Took a S**t and Died" (also available on the French CD). It's a common practice that, while makes some people happier to own just a few more songs than the others, makes these others to feel like fools. People who choose to buy the CD do so because they like the physical product, to carry and play it everywhere without any DRM restriction, just the old way. I am sorry to say that not everyone gets the same product for the same amount of money. That's a shame. It is interesting to note that the full 14-track version runs for about 62 minutes, which fits perfectly onto an audio CD. So absolutely no excuses that anybody could give us for such differences are reasonable.

Now let's focus on the "common" and "less privileged" version, which is the CD. Less privileged for sure, but cool enough to provide us some moments of delight. It's hard rock, but not that hard (I mean annoying here) in the general sense. My personal picks are "Sick, Sick, Sick", "Into the Hollow" and "3's & 7's". In some songs, while hearing Josh Homme on vocals, it often reminds me of Chris Cornell's voice (specially on "Battery Acid" and "3's & 7's"). I think they both own a very similar singing style.

"Make it Wit Chu" is a serious mistake. Sucks a lot! If for some reason they didn't want to gather all of the 14 songs in the CD version, "Era Vulgaris" or "The Fun Machine..." would have been better choices to put in place of this one. For this reason, and only for this reason, I give this record a 4-bar rating.