Queens of the Stone Age received generally positive reviews from critics, who placed it in the stoner rock genre and drew comparisons to krautrock bands such as Neu!

[7] Following the breakup of Kyuss in 1995, guitarist Josh Homme recorded new material in Seattle with producer Chris Goss, bassist Van Conner, and drummer Victor Indrizzo under the name Gamma Ray.

[8]The first ten tracks on Queens of the Stone Age were recorded in April 1998 at Monkey Studios in Homme's hometown of Palm Desert, California.

[9] Homme sang lead vocals and played the rest of the instruments on the recordings, crediting himself under the pseudonym "Carlo" for his bass guitar, keyboard, and piano work.

[9] Hutch, who served as live sound engineer for both Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age, is credited as a member of the group on the album, with the roles "FOH" (front of house), "guru", "HardWalls", and "back of door".

[10] The image for the album cover was taken from the 1972 book The Pin-Up: A Modest History by Mark Gabor, featuring Trinidadian-British model Sylvia Bayo.

Writing for NME, reviewer Kitty Empire scored it 8 out of 10, comparing it to Kyuss and saying that "for all its indisputable primitive charms, Queens of the Stone Age is actually a step forward in stoner evolution.

"[13] Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly gave it a B− rating, remarking that the band "delivers a workmanlike collection of heavy music that's just a bit too cerebral to fall under the stoner rock rubric (Fu Manchu).

"[12] James Hunter of Rolling Stone gave the album four stars out of five and commented that the band had "found a vital place between art-metal seriousness and pop pleasure.

"[6] Writing in Spin, Joe Gross scored Queens of the Stone Age 7 out of 10, saying "While there's really nothing in this collection worth trading in those Melvins albums for, it's strangely compelling to hear how Homme and his cohorts killed many an afternoon in a thick THC haze with Can's Tago Mago, then worked it into their patented pedal abuse.

"[16] Reviewing the album after Queens of the Stone Age had gained mainstream success with 2000's Rated R and 2002's Songs for the Deaf, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic remarked: "Hearing Queens of the Stone Age's long out of print debut many years after its initial 1998 release does pack the shock of revelation: Josh Homme's tightly wound blueprint for QOTSA was in place from the very beginning.

[...] There is sex and swagger to Queens of the Stone Age, there's a swing to the rhythms, there's a darkly enveloping carnal menace buttressed by muscle and lust that keeps the album from being an insular stoner headpiece.

Certainly, there's enough sinewy force to suggest the mighty brawn of Rated R and Songs for the Deaf; Homme retained enough of the desert spaciness of Kyuss to give Queens of the Stone Age an otherworldly shimmer, a hazy quality he later abandoned for aggressive precision, so this winds up as a unique record in his catalog, a place where you can hear Homme's past and future intertwining.

[9] The band, which by then consisted of Homme, guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, bassist Michael Shuman, drummer Joey Castillo, and keyboardist Dean Fertita, scheduled a tour in support of the album's reissue.

[21] Greg Moffitt of BBC Music remarked that "Although less varied and dynamic than Rated R, Queens of the Stone Age simply crackles with energy.

"[26] For Consequence of Sound, reviewer Karina Halle gave it a B grade and complimented the "very slight hand" of the remastering job: "Comparing the two albums side-by-side, you can hear a nice tonality in the re-release, a sharper, crisper quality that just wasn't holding up in the 1998 version.

"[24] Stuart Berman of Pitchfork also scored it 8 out of 10, but praised the added tracks, opining that "It's not often that padding out an already hefty album actually improves it, but in the Queens' case, the revised tracklist provides a more accurate portrait of how the band molded its mercurial Desert Sessions experiments into chiseled hard-rock monoliths.

Club, Austin L. Ray graded the reissue a B− and opined that "It's interesting to revisit the band's debut after four more albums and a dozen years, only to find it downright primitive by comparison.

"[22] All tracks are written by Josh Homme and Alfredo Hernández,[9] except where notedQueens of the Stone Age[10] Additional performers[10] Production[10] Artwork 2011 reissue[9]