In the pantheon of heavy rock, few albums have aged as perversely well as Rated R . Released on June 6, 2000, the second studio album by Queens of the Stone Age (QOTSA) was a bizarre, stoner-sludge curveball that refused to play by the rules of the Napster era. It was weird, it was slow, it was fast, and it featured a song about a drug (Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, Marijuana, Alcohol, Cocaine) that was oddly addictive without a single hook.
Don't settle for the stream. Hunt the FLAC. Lock in the CUE. Turn it up until the speakers buzz. Queens of the Stone Age Rated R 2000 FLAC CUE -...
The preserves the ritual of the CD—the track order, the hidden pauses, the artist’s intended segmentation. In the pantheon of heavy rock, few albums
Standard compressed formats crush the "quiet" to make the "loud" louder. When you compress Rated R , you lose the cavernous echo on "Better Living Through Chemistry." You lose the eerie silence before the bass drop in "Auto Pilot." You turn a 3D sonic sculpture into a cardboard cutout. FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) solves this heresy. Unlike a 320kbps MP3, which permanently discards frequencies the human ear might not hear, FLAC is a zip file for music. It reduces the file size without throwing away a single zero or one. Don't settle for the stream