While not a perfect record, Kyuss’ …And the Circus Leaves Town captures the Californian stoner rock juggernauts at a unique moment in time.
…And the Circus Leaves Town may be one of the most divisive records in metal history. One reviewer from the Encyclopedia Metallum calls Kyuss’ final album “very flawed”, while another considers it “underwhelming”. A thread on the Queens of the Stone Age subreddit from 2018 called …And the Circus Leaves Town is “one of the most underrated albums of all time”, on the other hand. Is this just another example of nearly everything becoming more polarized on the internet?
Or maybe the differences in opinion are due to the stratospheric expectations that come from being one of the best stoner metal/desert rock bands in history. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. One thing is for sure, however: it captures the lightning-in-a-bottle electricity of a singular moment in metal history.
Kyuss started when drummer Brant Bjork and guitarist Josh Homme bonded over heavy metal and punk rock bands like Black Flag and Discharge while still in high school. Bassist Nick Oliveri and vocalist John Garcia were soon brought into the fold, solidifying the core lineup that would show up on most of Kyuss’ discography.
Leaning into their raw punk rock roots on their first releases, 1989’s Sons of Kyuss EP and 1991’s Wretch, the Southern Californian quartet wouldn’t fully embrace their cosmically altered, epic, doomy aesthetic until 1992’s Blues for the Red Sun, produced by Master of Reality’s Chris Goss, which would have solidified their place in the stoner rock pantheon even if they’d never written or recorded another note.
Already, some of Kyuss‘ internal tensions and contradictions are showing: epic and ambitious on one hand/stripped down and in your face on the other. Boozed up and aggressive one moment/deeply stoned and chilled the next. Add in four strong, hot-blooded personalities, especially the controlling tendencies of Josh Homme and bassist Nick Oliveri’s short fuse, and you’ve got yourself a ticking time bomb. It wouldn’t take long for that time bomb to become a fireball, spectacularly erupting in the wake of Kyuss’ third LP, Welcome to Sky Valley, taking out half of the band, bassist Nick Olivetti and drummer Brant Bjork, in the process. …And the Circus Leaves Town is the sound of its shrapnel.
The recording of the album was fraught from the very start, despite being made with more resources than any of their previous three records. Signing with the major label of Elektra after their previous label, Dali Records, went belly-up in 1993 allowed Kyuss to graduate into the big time of the legendary Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California, home of everything from Tool‘s Undertow to the Grateful Dead‘s Terrapin Station to Rage Against the Machine‘s self-titled debut.
Despite their auspicious surroundings and lavish budget, the band were barely speaking by the time they started recording …And the Circus Leaves Town. A heavy, pervasive weed habit made the sessions even more hazy, unfocused, paranoid, and uncertain.
While their previous loose, freewheelin’ from-the-hip style allowed them to combine the might of bands like Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin with the addictive Southern Boogie of bands like the Allman Brothers, the frayed nerves and tense atmosphere pens Kyuss in on …And The Circus Leaves Town. It sounds both jammy, flabby, and unfocused one moment and too poppy and straight the next. It may be an uneven record, but it’s still full of standout moments: kickass grooves, heady atmosphere, and a gravity well of sneering attitude.
…And the Circus Leaves Town wastes no time getting into it. It opens right up with “Hurricane”, a first collaboration between Kyuss’ twin fire-breathing heads, Josh Homme and vocalist John Garcia, backed by a gravelslide guitar line and thuggish drum beat from new drummer Alfredo Hernández. This blazes right into the trancey groove metal of “One Inch Man”, sounding like a blues rock band higher than a kite on cactus, locking into an Albert King trance until sunrise.
These coils unlace and unthread into the loose malevolence of “Thee Ol’Boozenany”, a campfire classic rock jam dipped in tar and hash, rolled in steel shavings, and launched into orbit. The band return to Earth, hungover and limping, with the bruised bump ‘n grind of “Gloria Lewis”, another Homme/Garcia collaboration.
They continue through the Earth, tunneling into some subterranean aquifer on “Phototropic”, bioluminescent with its flanged bass line until erupting into a thermal geyser of blazing guitars and Garcia’s powerful vocals. This underground river resolves into the peculiar Eastern European jig of “El Rodeo”, which sounds like an outtake from The Nutcracker despite its skank guitars, trance basslines, and southwestern nomenclature.
As you can likely tell just from these brief descriptions, …And the Circus Leaves Town often feels like three separate bands collaborating on a single record. The most obvious and striking reference would be Queens of the Stone Age, as Homme would leave Kyuss to found the new group just a few months after dropping …And the Circus Leaves Town.
Then there’s the rough’n’ready, bloody knuckled hardcore influence that animated Kyuss at the start, drawn out by Hernandez’s primordial drumming. Finally, there’s the rawer, looser DGAF attitude and songwriting approach of Garcia, who would go on to keep the desert rock bonfires burning bright with legendary underground stoner metal bands like Slo Burn, Unida, and Hermano. It’s like the past, present, and future of creosote-soaked Southern California rock.
Despite the strength of its material and their status as icons of underground and independent music, the Kyuss saga died tragically. They would disband just a few months after releasing …And the Circus Leaves Town, despite increasingly well-attended shows. To make matters worse, Homme would permanently torpedo Kyuss’ legacy, even going so far as to sue the other members for using the name after their breakup. It may be an uneven, even at times contradictory record that erupted from messy melodrama, but it’s still one of the more interesting metal records of the 1990s that continues to resonate 30 years later.