Eagles of Death Metal: Zipper Down

It’s been over 15 years since childhood friends Joshua Homme and Jesse "the Devil" Hughes founded their cartoonish, carnal blues-rock project, Eagles of Death Metal. When Homme's not manning the drum kit or the mixing board for Eagles (he’s produced each one of their LPs) he fronts Queens of the Stone Age, one of the biggest hard rock bands on the planet. So it makes sense that listeners would categorize the group as a Queens of the Stone Age side project. But EoDM has never been Homme’s show—this band has always been about Hughes, the strutting, showboating, irredeemably decadent presence at its center, the greasy cog around which the freak show turns.

The arrival of Zipper Down coincides with the documentary The Redemption of the Devil, which details one hell of year in Hughes' life, one in which he becomes ordained as a Protestant minister, prepares to marry former adult film star Tuesday Cross, ventures further to the right on the political spectrum (he's a noted gun fanatic), enters a custody battle for his kid, and, somehow, finds time to cut a new Eagles record. The film attempts to answer a question faced by every aging rocker at some point in their lives: when you’ve had your fill of sex, drugs, and scuzz-rock, who do you turn to for guidance? In Hughes’ case, there are only two logical responses: the guy upstairs, and the guy behind the bar.

On Zipper Down, it's clear that Hughes’ certificate of ordination doesn’t exclude him from the party; as outlined on album closer "The Reverend", his spiritual leanings are all part of his divine mission to get us all to "boogie-woogie". In interviews, he's preached the gospel of pure methamphetamine and public sex acts, while openly accepting the fiery abyss that lies in wait. In other words, he’s prepared to pick up the tab for every bender (and miserable morning after) detailed on Zipper Down—but only once the party’s over. Accordingly, most of the songs aren't about angels or demons, but rather girls who like to shake their asses ("Got a Woman" and its "Slight Return" on side B), girls who like to swing their asses ("Silverlake (K.S.O.F.M.)") and two-timing heartbreakers ("I Love You All the Time", "Oh Girl"). Homme supports the songs with one shuffling, snare-heavy beat after the next, peppered by handclaps and the odd cowbell.

But Zipper Down’s tongue-in-cheek humor belies the dark self-awareness of two guys well-versed in the study of human depravity. A closer look at the puffed-up, pivoting highlight "Silverlake", for example, reveals it not as a paean to the fashionable Los Angeles neighborhood, but rather a tale of a wannabe hipster trying to weasel his way into the hotspot-du-jour by having his girl get with the bouncer ("So if you date this guy/ He's gonna let us in!"), only to suffer an existential crisis in the end. Likewise, a forlorn, foggy-headed cover of Duran Duran’s one-night-stand anthem "Save a Prayer" revisits the album’s coital motifs through a confessional lens, solidifying aforementioned themes of atonement and reckoning.

Despite these more reflective moments, Zipper Down mostly sticks to the formula of the duo’s past three albums, frequently recycling structural and instrumental elements from past songs. The haggard guitars and handclap-heavy backbeat of "Got a Woman" recalls Death by Sexy highlight "Chase the Devil", while "The Deuce" shares a bluesy foundation with Peace Love Death Metal's "So Easy". This repetition isn’t to the Eagles’ detriment: theirs has always been a goofy project, one grounded in humor, wit, and sass rather than paradigm shifts. Easy rockers like the sawtoothed, shimmying  "Complexity" prove that the tricks aren’t necessary, as long as your hips are moving.