It’s a spacey sonic departure that finds calm in the quieter spaces that are overlooked in the band’s catalogue.<\/p>\n
“Oftentimes, probably largely by us more than anyone else,” Homme tells Double J.<\/p>\n
“And the quieter volume doesn’t mean it’s less heavy overall.”<\/p>\n
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That’s the spiritual lesson learned from Alive In The Catacombs, the documented performance in the titular Paris crypt<\/a> where the band re-imagined their back catalogue in haunting, pared-back arrangements.<\/p>\n For Homme, unplugging underscored a realisation hard-won through health struggles and personal reinvention, shifting toward the importance of honesty and taking risks, even if it challenges your audience.<\/p>\n “If you’re blessed to be in a scenario that lasts this long it feels like the obligation is to search around as much as you can and find new ways to do the old things,” he says.<\/p>\n Carving a career<\/p>\n It’s 30 years since Homme left pioneering stoner rockers Kyuss, emerging from the Californian desert to front an evolving QOTSA line-up over the course of an accomplished discography<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite the genre’s waxing and waning in the mainstream, you can correlate rock’s peaks with Homme’s career.<\/p>\n Take your pick: there’s 2002’s Hottest 100 topping<\/a> Songs For The Deaf, 2013 blockbuster Like Clockwork, or even his key roles in supergroup Them Crooked Vultures<\/a> alongside Dave Grohl and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones.<\/p>\n Then there’s producing albums for Iggy Pop<\/a> and Arctic Monkeys.<\/p>\n Throughout, reverence for Queens of the Stone Age’s rock stardom and status as a festival-headlining live force has remained unassailable.<\/p>\n Easy Street arrives alongside news of the band touring Australia this summer<\/a> with support from Primus and Tropical F*** Storm.<\/p>\n “I’m really looking forward to it,” says Homme. “I’d hate to give everything away but there’s going to be pieces of lots of things.”<\/p>\n If recent overseas set lists are anything to go by, that means pulling out deep cuts that haven’t been aired in almost 20 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n Homme hints “a little bit” of the show could align with their recent Catacombs shows, where QOTSA stripped more of their material to its bones to celebrate what he calls “the brutality of the lower volume”.<\/p>\n Indeed. Trading noisy guitars and heavy drums for intimately orchestrated strings, horns and percussion, those raved-about performances emphasised theatricality and gothic intensity.<\/p>\n Josh Homme and the Bad Seeds, if you will. Though not even Nick Cave at his most dangerous would think to stalk the stage with a meat cleaver, as Homme did.<\/p>\n “Man, I really love that thing. It’s weird how you can get attached to inanimate objects, you know?” he says.<\/p>\n “I would sharpen it every day. It felt so good, like a meditation. I felt proud to hold that cleaver when it was razor sharp.”<\/p>\n Slamming the half-metre blade into an onstage woodblock or waving it around introduced an obvious OH&S risk, with Homme even nicking his own neck occasionally<\/a>.<\/p>\n “I foolishly believed ‘we would never hurt each other. It would never dare. That’s not the way our relationship is’,” he responds with a wicked chuckle.<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n The cleaver is a microcosm for Homme and co.’s desire to carve out new dimensions after three decades of QOTSA.<\/p>\n “At this point now, sometimes we’re loud. Sometimes we’re quiet. Sometimes we’re well-dressed, sometimes we’re not very well dressed,” he says.<\/p>\n “It’s my job to keep looking around and finding something else.<\/p>\n “Oftentimes you feel a bit like a hoarder: ‘It’s in here somewhere! The next way to do this is under a pile somewhere.'”<\/p>\n The making and meaning of Easy Street<\/p>\n If Homme has been hoarding, Easy Street is the sound of QOTSA decluttering, built solely from porch-side strumming, Homme’s desert Elvis croon, and layers of guitar sustain evoking Robert Fripp’s technique on David Bowie’s Heroes.<\/p>\n Self-produced and recorded “really, very casually”, its warm sound is contrasted with witty, acerbic lyrics.<\/p>\n “Just shut up and f**k me or shut up and go away [\u2026] Don’t ruin the vibe, I do all that by myself” drawls Homme, accompanied by country musician Nikki Lane whose 2022 debut album Denim & Diamonds he produced.<\/p>\n “Her songs about life, love, loss & just plain picking yourself up to go for another round in the ring \u2026 well, they helped me do the same,” he wrote on Instagram<\/a> of the experience.<\/p>\n Through that lens, Easy Street can be interpreted as someone dusting off and facing up once more to self-destructive tendencies.<\/p>\n “I spent so many years,” he trails off, then returns.<\/p>\n “You think you’re entering these systems and trying to corrode and corrupt them and destroy them.<\/p>\n “Then at some point you realise that system, that revolution, you’re just fighting against yourself.”<\/p>\n At 53, Homme is learning to let go and be more accepting, to enjoy a more peaceful process “instead of trying to control everything”.<\/p>\n (Not) pleasing the fanbase<\/p>\n Queens of the Stone Age haven’t strictly softened, “obviously we’re not Crosby, Stills, and Nash”, but Easy Street possesses reflective notes of vulnerability that are rarer amid their broader, muscular discography.<\/p>\n “There’s a few lines in there that, the first time you sing them, they’re just difficult to get across your lips. ‘Can I say this?'” Homme confesses.<\/p>\n “But when I feel afraid to say something I know that’s the right direction because I know I’m challenging myself.<\/p>\n “Lyrics that feel raw [and] honest enough to be framed in something that’s gentler and more relaxed.<\/p>\n “That’s almost a new combination for us. We’re onto something that we really enjoy at this moment.”<\/p>\n Fans of headbanging may feel very differently.<\/p>\n Queens Of The Stone Age (Andreas Neumann)<\/p>\n “We’re a band that’s constantly confused our audience and I understand that. I meet people all the time that are like, ‘Why can’t you just do this or that?’<\/p>\n “I always say ‘I know, I know’. I don’t know why being contrary even to yourself sometimes feels so good or so necessary, but it just does.”<\/p>\n Embracing discomfort, for themselves as much as their fanbase, is crucial to avoid stagnation in the long game.<\/p>\n “I don’t know if [those people] realise they’re asking you to copy yourself. Or ‘why can’t you just guess what I’m thinking and do that?’ At the end of the day this is really trying to figure out who you are,” Homme says.<\/p>\n “[Asking yourself] ‘how do I exist and be comfortable in my own skin and be okay with that?’ That’s quite a challenge. It’s quite a Rubik’s Cube to try to solve.”<\/p>\n In a reflective mood<\/p>\n Such deeply philosophical words carry weight coming from someone who seemed to live as hard as he played.<\/p>\n Homme had a reputation for leveraging his intimidating 195cm frame and rock star status to enforce good vibes at shows, breaking up fights but also insulting and threatening unruly crowd members<\/a>.<\/p>\n That persona soured significantly when, in 2017, he struck a photographer in the face<\/a>.<\/p>\n “I was a total d**k, and I’m truly sorry” he said in a video apology after the incident<\/a>. “I’m going to have to figure out some stuff I think.”<\/p>\n Not long after, Homme had to figure out a very rough start to the decade<\/a>.<\/p>\n How QOTSA brought the Paris Catacombs to life<\/a><\/p>\n QOTSA’s Josh Homme wasn’t going to let a health crisis ruin a passion project decades in the making.<\/p>\n Following the death of close friends such as former collaborator Mark Lanegan<\/a> and Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins<\/a> he was diagnosed with cancer in 2013 and then involved in a messy custody battle over his three kids with ex-wife Brody Dalle.<\/p>\n Illness re-surfaced in 2024, forcing cancellation of tour dates and breaking out of hospital and soldiering through sickness<\/a> to record Alive at the Catacombs.<\/p>\n So, how is Homme’s health these days? He’s learned to listen to his body.<\/p>\n “I used to think there was a great worthiness in ignoring your thoughts and your physical feeling. But I’ve come to realise you can’t ignore yourself,” he says.<\/p>\n “Especially in the pursuit of something that’s supposed to help find and reveal something about yourself.”<\/p>\n![\"black](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/cd90fb80555651955cc2cd281d67da7c.jpeg\")
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