(Credits: Far Out / Press)
Mon 10 November 2025 9:00, UK
Through post-band uncertainty and facing one of life’s crossroads, Josh Homme managed to deliver to the rock world his Queens of the Stone Age monster.
In the aftermath of Palm Desert stoner rock outfit Kyuss, Homme nearly packed in the whole music gig, heading to Seattle in 1995 and briefly considering a new venture in business studies. Yet, following a brief stint with Screaming Trees as rhythm guitarist, Homme would cut ‘18 AD’ for the Burn One Up! Music for Stoners compilation two years later, first deploying the Queens of the Stone Age moniker.
Shortly after, several songs recorded as Gamma Ray – a name already claimed by the German power metal band – made their way to the Kyuss / Queens of the Stone Age split EP, the final embers of his former band, and the significant introduction of his new day job.
A sound was emerging. Chunky and semi-motorik but thick with groove, Queens of the Stone Age was already in touching distance of their alchemic brew of trance-inducing riffs that straddled Homme’s background in punk and a love of hard rock, but also embraced a wider appeal with its razor-sharp hooks. On to something, Homme corralled a team of close confidants to cut a record on his creative and practical terms. As well as bringing the crew to Palm Desert’s Monkey Studios closer to home, Homme stepped up to production duties along with old Kyuss engineer Joe Barresi, and financed the bulk of the sessions out of his own pocket.
Smarting from a tempestuous relationship with Elektra from the Kyuss days, Homme sought to cut the bullshit and deliver a record without compromise, and too fully formed for the label to back out from. “It just felt like, I’ll just make the record I want to make and I won’t have to ask an A&R guy what he thinks because it’ll just be there, and you will be able to say, ‘I like this’ or ‘I think this should be a coaster’ and in that way it’ll be really definitive,” he told Decibel in 2011, the same year of the eponymous debut’s reissue. “It stopped that discussion, that war… but I didn’t really realise I’d be sleeping in my Camaro after that”.
He added, “I think it was really important time for me. I never really cared about money or shit like that, I never wanted to be famous; I wanted to make something that could last for a long time”.
1998’s Queens of the Stone Age would enjoy a warm critical reception, but become overshadowed by the later Rated R and Songs for the Deaf, mammoth rock LPs that offered a sorely-needed antidote in a landscape of nu-metal silliness. Looking back on his new baby all those years later, Homme was able to sing its praises.
“I think that record sounds as good now as it did then,” Homme confessed. “There is a personality on that record. I think it needs to be discovered by people; a lot of people thought that Rated R was our debut because even when it was out it was hard to get. I mean, I am re-discovering it, thinking, ‘Wow, I really like this thing!’”
Related Topics