The Foo Fighters played a surprise show last night with Queens Of The Stone Age, thrown together by Verizon to celebrate the release of the new Blackberry Storm. To get in, you had to play that game where you text some retarded phrase to some weird five digit number. If you got a reply and jumped through a couple hoops, you ‘won,’ but then you had to be one of the first 800 ‘winners’ to beat the traffic into Hollywood to be there by 7:30…

After the text message game, I expected the Avalon event to be a corporate whorehouse, but I’ve gotta admit, Verizon handled it pretty well.

Heart On is the upcoming third studio album from the Eagles Of Death Metal, known to their friends, families and victims as Jesse Hughes and Josh Homme- the latter, of course, being the nucleus and founder of the seminal gloomy sex rock outfit Queens Of The Stone Age. The Eagles’ garage-glam scuzz metal hops up a few rungs on the danceability scale this time around, as they dig into fuzzier blues leanings and deeper shades of chunk-riffage than their previous releases.

Clever, jagged percussion leads the parade more often than not on the album, leading one to believe that Josh Homme is, quite possibly, just as happy behind the kit as he is on the mic. Whatever the case, his playground relationship with Jesse Hughes has spawned three albums of solid sport-fuck rock joy all about chicks, man. And the world is a better place for it.

Here at Antiquiet, we don’t mince words about our hot love for The Bronx. The LA-based hardcore punk unit is just a few weeks away from unveiling their third self-titled LP (aka Bronx III), and the scene is set quite a bit differently than for Bronx II (2006). In addition to lineup changes and added official appendages, they’ve toured relentlessly since their last release and have the near-telepathic chops to prove it.

We were lucky enough to get our greasy little paws on an advance copy of Bronx III, and there’s certainly no garbage here; it’s all listenable, and about as close to a flawless record as I’ve heard all year.

I have a problem. It’s an ugly habit that is destroying my life. When everyone else hates an album I love, a syndrome kicks in- its severity proportionate my peers’ collective hatred for said album- and I find myself compulsively determined to convince everyone that they’re wrong, that they just need to give it a truly objective chance.

Forgive me, but I am unable to stop loving The Distillers’ 2003 album Coral Fang.

Queens Of The Stone Age lost a very close personal friend on July 2nd. Natasha Shneider, from the band Eleven, died of cancer. She had joined QOTSA along with partner Alain Johannes for most (if not all) of the Lullabies To Paralyze tours, and showed up on many a Queens song, and many a Desert Sessions song. She was a beautiful woman, and a talented musician, who likely appears on more than one album you consider among your favorites of all time if you’re a regular here.

So Homme and Queens Of The Stone Age organized a concert to celebrate her life, inviting all of her friends; All proceeds to go to the Natasha Shneider Memorial Fund. Tickets were $100 each, and the event sold out.