Whether it’s catharsis or comfort, I’ve always found Queens of the Stone Age or the subsequent endeavors to be at their best when precariously balanced between bleak and boisterous.

From the ashes of Kyuss and the Desert Sessions, there has been a growing sense of Jekyll and Hyde as the bands discography grew. For every “Make it wit Chu”, there’s a “Battery acid”. (From 2007s Era Vulgaris). For every “Smooth Sailing”, there’s an “I appear Missing”. (“…Like Clockwork” 2013).

For all intents and purposes, the wounds have always been there. Sometimes inflicted, sometimes healing, sometimes covered but now they are as exposed and oozing more than they ever have, certainly since “… Like Clockwork”. Paradoxically, frontman, nucleus and stalwart Josh Homme has lyrically never been more transparent as he is now – confronting what has transpired over the last decade or so. Personally or professionally (and in some tragic cases, both), it’s all out in the open here.

A messy divorce from The Distillers front woman Brodie Dalle sandwiched between a botched knee surgery, an attack during side project Eagles of Death Metal’s 2015 Bataclan gig and a recent cancer diagnosis, dealing with the loss of long time collaborators and friends might almost feel like road bumps along the way.

Yet the actual music of their eighth record titled “In Times New Roman” is in some ways a continuation in tone of tracks like “Keep Your Eyes Peeled”, it is also unsympathetic of this clarity. A murky, obscure and ominous album rid of the glean and shine of the guests of times gone by and mostly replaced with a throbbing pulse that makes the grooves feel almost… guilty.

I consider myself a fan of Queens of the Stone Age, and the various collaborations during the bands tenure. Putting indiscretions and altercations aside, Homme along with Dave Grohl and Trent Reznor especially have frequently and effortlessly proved themselves as the torch bearers of modern alternative rock. There are few that reach his evolving creativity, presence and style.

While other bands I’ve listened to for the last 20 or so years have released albums in the last 18 months, ranging from the great (Mastodon) to the OK (Metallica) the curious (the Mars Volta) to the eye rolling (which shall remain nameless) the Queens of the Stone Age journey over the last two decades I’ve been listening has been nothing less than very good. Periodically masterful and regularly intriguing, I can’t deny it has sometimes taken a few spins to fully buy in.

Unfortunately, their last album, “Villians”, was a misstep and never clicked with me. Maybe I was too invested in the dark and brooding “… Like Clockwork” from (I can’t believe it) 2013, yet I have actually always enjoyed the more upbeat side of their repertoire, including super group side project Them Crooked Vultures “Gunman” or even the sheer psychotic brilliance of something like “Tension Head” from their breakout album “Rated R”.

Opener “Obscenery” is no “millionaire” but it’s a solid enough start. Similar to the first single released Emotion Sickness” in May, Homme swoops around his vocal range and definitely pulls no punches regarding the lyrical subject matter of the album.

“Ain’t it a little strange?

pretend to be awake?

Do you think we’ll break?

Like a slap in the face.”

“Made to Parade” is a stomper cut from the same witch burning cloth as “Warsaw or the First Breath You Take After You Give Up” by Them Crooked Vultures, with a bit of electro fuzz and some direct shade for good measure.

“You’re sure to be a winner babe

Give your best years away

To a bloated corporation

Who’ll work you like a slave”

“Think you’re made to parade? Take the mess you made

& float away”.

Similarly, straight out of the “Spinning in the daffodils” playbook, Carnavoyeur is a macabre, monochrome (with a splash of red) ode to acceptance, fate and mortality with morbidly drenched lines-

“Flying high realize there are no more mountains to climb”

“We live

We die

We fail

We rise

I’m a vulture so I

Hear your goodbyes”

“What the Peephole say” is a very welcome injection of urgency. Lean, mean and a punch drunk middle finger poking up from all the melancholy.

“No time in life for shit

Spoonful by the pound, ain’t having it

Do you practice to preach or pretend to be?”

“Sicily” is an odd beast of a track. Head down with frustration, strained, clicking and creaking through an unnerving loud quiet dynamic and sparse, creepy vocals and disturbing lyrics.

“You got no possessions just your flesh on” Homme howls on single “Emotion Sickness”- a close to “classic” sounding track with lethal jagged edges and an almost surf rock chorus. Be sure to “check the price/ Buy alibis by the slice”.

Epic album closer “Straight Jacket Fitting” clocks in a whopping 9 minutes yet feels utterly absorbing with Homme reaching into the depths of his vocal range, some filthy fuzzy staccato, and an introspective ending.

All across the albums almost 48 minutes Troy Van Leeuwen, Michael Shuman and Dean Fertita generate some engulfing and at times unrelenting soundscapes, it feels like an unstable entity swirling and crawling around wrestling with its form, but kept together by some harder than rock solid drums and unmistakable Homme falsetto.

It mostly strides and plods rather than gallops, with menace and weight rather than spiced grit and with a stanky grimace instead of a sly grin.

I have a few gripes. Jon Theodore is a fantastic drummer and his work with The Mars Volta especially is incredible – the guy has nothing to prove but honestly he’s underused here, only highlighted very, very briefly on “Paper Machete” and by the deceptively simple pockets of percussion intertwined with Homme’s sultry vocal lines on “Negative Space”.

While there have been times in the past where QOTSA’s darkness and bravado have shared a stage, (from the intoxicatingly brilliant “Better Living Through Chemistry” to the gloriously hammy “The Vampyre of Time and Memory”), and while the grooves still do climb to the surface on this record, “Time and place” is about as fun as it gets, immediately reminding me of “Factory of Faith” by a Frusciante- less Chili Peppers.

If “Songs For the Deaf” was a road trip and “Villains” was the party, then “In Times New Roman” is sifting through the recollection of a late night bar room brawl. Surly, dirty and bludgeoning in its honesty. It sits deservingly amongst the Queens of the Stoneage catalog as a chapter exposing vulnerability and honesty underneath all of the visceral confrontation.

With force and momentum, then, “In Times New Roman” is sometimes a tough but galvanizing and satisfying listen. There’s the raw emotion, the swagger and a skeleton covered in chaos. Not so much a trip or a journey but simultaneously a reflection of what’s been happening and an assessment of the self.

As a Queens record, it is both a new chapter and a welcome ode to their roots in some respects, but ultimately it is the most necessary and significant of Homme’s career.

If a sequel to the frankly excellent Them Crooked Vultures album never happens, I will be pretty content to think of this as a very personal one.