Queens of the Stone Age
O2 Area, London
fifteenth November 2023

Queens of the Stone Age deliver their explosive stage present to London and set the O2 Area alight. Adam Steiner experiences. 

The hearth-breathing head of Queens of the Stone Age, Josh Homme, manages to be each the primary and the final man on the finish of the world, a Republican-voting libertarian freed from inhibition, he throws himself across the stage, abandoning himself to the eagerness of traditional rock and roll dragged into the twenty-first century. Queens of the Stone Age’s music is each dying knell and celebration for indignant, horny guitar music filled with lick and kicks. Queens personal the sector with the assured command of a band standing in entrance of a strong again catalogue, this can be a battle-hardened band pushed by the mass-energy of continued touring after a number of years absent from the reside circuit.* 

The primary three songs are hammered residence as a sonic assault, reaching from Rated R’s Common John and the worldwide hit No One Is aware of which took the band to a brand new stage of public publicity. Queens are relentlessly tight with a lightweight present usually verging on the catastrophic, the spectacle is pure horrorshow of lightning and thunder, it will be scary if it wasn’t a lot enjoyable, and so danceable.

The Finish Is Nero tour displays the identical career-best power of the band’s headline Glastonbury set of the summer season, equally peppered with hits and feel-good songs that invite the viewers right into a happier place, not one thing that will be related to the darker druggier extra of the band’s earlier stoner rock. Clean Crusing and I Sat By The Ocean draw the viewers right into a one-man social gathering with the singer, whereas earlier than the band had been tied to a hostile depth, today Queens gigs are all about having a great time, as long as nobody will get damage. They play one in every of my favorite songs, If I Had A Tail, which bristles with barely hid sensuality coiled right into a venomous sting, similar to the continued kiss-off of latest songs from In Instances New Roman. Homme loves a pun and a flipped cliche; Paper Machete, What The Peephole Say and Emotion Illness show a renewed lyrical dedication of wordplay duelling with scores to settle. Homme would argue that he by no means writes about particular individuals in his songs, however it’s onerous to not hear buried resentments excavated and purged in cathartic revelation – a lot of the album revisits the mandatory ache of therapeutic.  

Queens of the Stone Age proceed to play with a pseudo-macho picture, throwing brutal riffs in opposition to falsetto crooning and groove-driven riffs, there has all the time been one thing ZZ Prime at their core, nearly camp, half-mocking. Ever since Josh Homme first plugged his guitar right into a bass amp to realize his heavy dense signature sound permitting him to leap into twangy, solos, reminiscent of Make It Wit Chu – its louche bar-room piano providing one other unfurling groove together with early traditional The Misplaced Artwork Of Maintaining A Secret. In contrast, the band might have rolled out extra deep reduce oddities, like Monster In Your Parasol, however this can be a present for everybody, not simply die-hard followers. Equally, the band shut the principle a part of the set with Little Sister, the freaky hymn to watching individuals reside by means of their mistake, dangerous timing as a type of purgatory.    

Coming from a greater place after 5 years of battle Josh Homme comes throughout as a person reborn, drawing upon a brand new power confirmed by his survival of most cancers, a painful divorce and the lack of a number of good buddies from the world of music in only a few brief years. Talking in an interview with Zane Lowe this yr, Homme identified that despite a renewed sobriety, he nonetheless revels within the chaotic glory of creating music and reside exhibits, calling for yet another drink, yet another spherical of oysters from the bar, a joie de vivre that finds Queens of the Stone Age and Josh Homme himself full with a love of life and taking part in among the finest rock music on the market.    

*Hunter S. Thompson famously mentioned that Las Vegas was the inevitable destiny of America if the Nazis had received the conflict; within the cavernous corridors of the O2 snaking procuring centre that encricle the sector with bland-to-death chain shops, alongside the venue’s alternative of promoting pints of virtually solely (American) Budwieser for 8.50 a pint,  I can’t assist however really feel he was, as soon as once more, confirmed proper.

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You could find Queens of the Stone Age on-line right here, on Fb, and Twitter

Phrases by Adam Steiner, learn his archive right here

All images © Paul Grace. For extra of Paul’s writing and images go to his archive. Paul is on Fb, Twitter, Instagram and his web sites are www.paulgrace-eventphotos.co.uk & www.pgrace.co.uk