bassist Nick Oliveri, a wildman whose telepathic musical connection to Homme defined the band's fury. Lullabies to Paralyze, the Queens' fourth album, suffers from Oliveri's departure and Grohl's absence. Drummer Joey Castillo lacks Grohl's wallop, and stopgap bassists can't replace Oliveri's melodic dexterity or his ingrained ability to dart around Homme's rigid riffs.

Ever since he first distanced himself from his teenage beginnings as the guitarist for early-Nineties stoner-metal band Kyuss, Homme has been caught between opposing aesthetics: He loves an extended jam (the first QOTSA album, all those Desert Session discs) as well as an extended joke (the fake radio announcements that interrupt Songs for the Deaf; his drumming on the garage-pop side project Eagles of Death Metal). He also admires extreme discipline, whether it's a taut, Teutonic-rock groove, a minimal but devastating guitar riff or a barely disguised pop tune. It's the tension between Homme's conflicting impulses that pressurizes Lullabies to Paralyze's highest points and accounts for its lows.

You've probably already heard "Little Sister," the first great rock single to hit radio in 2005. More like Foo Fighters than anything QOTSA created with Grohl, this compressed wonder -- all buzzing guitar lines, plus an explosive singalong chorus -- announces a further move away from traditional hard rock and toward the art punk of the Strokes and other modern popsters. Homme gets even more wired on "Medication," which streamlines QOTSA's blare to a combustive hum: The band hovers on one chord for most of its two minutes, then abruptly veers in jagged angles to heighten the drama.

A likely kiss-off to Oliveri, "Everybody Knows That You're Insane," winds even tighter. Beginning with a slow-burning slide guitar that soars like Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" layered over the final moments of the Beatles' "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," the skyrocketing intro creates a false sense of serenity before jump-cutting into a nasty blitzkrieg chorus thrash. Stereo guitars drive the song's tense verses as Homme and mates evoke the Buzzcocks with far more finesse than bands like Green Day ever do.

Lullabies falters when Homme returns to the protracted riffage of his past. Its back-to-back monster jams "Someone's in the Wolf" and