Return of the Rock!

And the supergroup. And the power trio. And unfulfilled expectations.

Honestly, I didn't set my expectations too high for Them Crooked Vultures. I had every reason to, but have been burned so many times by the seemingly random amassing of individual personalities, so great in their original guises, for the sake of creating a 'supergroup.' Whether driven by ego or just the need to 'branch out' from their day jobs, supergroups rarely deliver the goods or live up to the precedent set by the true SUPERGROUPS throughout rock music history.

Classic Rock is the bedrock of the supergroup nomenclature, historically speaking. Cream, Blind Faith, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and Bad Company were all successful, both commercially and in the eyes of fans.

The last 20 years have seen a few collectives worthy of the title 'supergroup'. The "Grunge" era produced Mad Season and Temple of the Dog, both bands pulling from the cream of the Seattle sound's then-contemporary crop. Members of Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Screaming Trees came together to pay tribute to a fallen comrade who left this world far too soon to the rockstar cliche heroin overdose (Temple of the Dog, a one-time only tribute to Mother Love Bone's Andrew Wood) and to dive even deeper into the smack-fueled darkness of another mercurial Seattle figure (Mad Season and Alice in Chains vocalist, Layne Staley, another victim of heroin's grip, though many years after Mad Season made magic with Above.) There was A Perfect Circle featuring members of Tool, Nine Inch Nails, and Smashing Pumpkins, which essentially was the voice of Tool doing similarly dark, but equally adventurous musical explorations.

Then there was Velvet Revolver. The vocal force of Stone Temple Pilots laid over the guitar and rhythm section of Guns N Roses. It was new and exciting for about a week and the love affair (for me at least) was over. This was kind of expected. As good as the music in G'nR was at times, it was Axl's voice/antics/ego that overshadowed the band far more often than should have been allowed. Stone Temple Pilots was the opposite creature. The band was very tight, at times adventurous and inventive; anchored by, but never eclipsed by Scott Weiland's vocals. Sure, Weiland got mad press for his heroin holidazed behavior, but not before the band delivered the goods for their first couple albums.

As much as I wanted to like Velvet Revolver and didn't, I equally wanted to love Audioslave. Unfortunately, I ended up loathing them more than Velvet Revolver. The vocals of Soundgarden meets the guitar of Rage Against the Machine equals dream pairing in my books. The results were depressingly stale; at their best never even fully recalling Cornell or Morello's worst days in their 90's "Rock God" jobs. It all sounded so very predictable; merely an empty corpse of what should have been a new lease on life. Yes, both Velvet Revolver and Audioslave moved a shitload of units and played to audiences hungry for their heroes, but when history is revealed, these two bands will just be the bands that came after G'nR, Soundgarden, STP, and RATM. Four of the best bands of the late 80s to mid 90s. Magic doesn't often happen twice.

Magic rarely happens once, if at all. For it to hit twice, you would need some pretty supreme talent. Someone like Dave Grohl, drummer for Nirvana and head Foo. You'd need someone like Josh Homme, a decent enough guitarist and vocalist who almost single handedly (along with Grohl's Foo Fighters) kept ROCK alive this decade. Queens of the Stone Age had their moment in 2003 when Songs for the Deaf unleashed the instant classic, "No One Knows" on an unsuspecting audience. Well, those not familiar with QOTSA's previous output at least. Since then, Homme continued his never-ending desert trek, making music equally rocking and unfocused. And you sure as hell would need the bass player / keyboardist for Led Zeppelin, John Paul Jones, who has avoided limelight since Led Zeppelin upped the ante for what hard rock could be some 40 years ago. Yeah, you would definitely need Jonesy.

Well, the Gods have spoken and these three dynamic forces have combined to create a real supergroup. My expectations were met and exceeded with every listen of TCV's eponymous debut.

The first two minutes of lead track, "No One Loves Me & Neither Do I," hint at potential greatness. Tease is actually a better term. But then the song slams into gear and the album is off and running replete with narcotic riffage ala Homme and some of the tightest grooves this year from what I consider a dream rhythm section in Jones and Grohl.

"Mind Eraser, No Chaser" and "New Fang" follow up with more heaviness and are doing something right as both are in the Mixtape's top five currently. "Scumbag Blues" is the sonic love child of Cream and Led Zeppelin; Homme aping the vocal style of the former's Jack Bruce while Jones throws down an organ solo that could be dubbed "Re-Trampled Under Foot."

"Interlude with Ludes" is classic Homme, all desert woozy and dripping with an especially demented sexuality reminiscent of his best QOTSA material. "Gunman" is a textbook lock and load groove fest and every other song on this killer collection sounds like it will hold up well 10 years from now. I personally hope these guys are on album five by then.