4. Kyuss – Blues For The Red Sun (1992)

With Blues For The Red Sun, Kyuss took what was an isolated regional scene — the Palm Desert rock sound — and made it a full-fledged sub-genre. The sun-baked Black Sabbath sound was pioneered almost a decade earlier by Masters Of Reality, whose singer Chris Goss produced Blues For The Red Sun, but that group peddled in distortion. Kyuss gave the genre its Ride The Lightning by whipping those walls of fuzz into fist-raising bangers like “Freedom Run” and especially the immortal “Green Machine.” John Garcia’s voice took on enough of a scratchy roar to give Kyuss’s ridiculous and juvenile lyrics some weight. At the same time Brant Bjork and Nick Oliveri became a multi-speed rhythm section, and their frequent re-invention of the rhythm underpinned Homme’s riffs in an almost post-rock way. Suddenly Homme had the room to explore his riffs, push and pull his songs while playing the same few notes the way his obvious influences — Tony Iommi and Jimmy Page — did.