215. Queens of The Stone Age
The O2 Arena
15 November 2023
It was meant to be me and one of my friends. Two seasoned gig veterans, bonded by years of riffs, feedback and questionable cocktail decisions, ready to spend an evening at the altar of Queens of the Stone Age. But alas the Petri dish that is a London nursery made a viral bombing run on his whole family, leaving him stranded in a pit of self-pity and Imodium.
Enter my daughter, taking her place as my now regular gig plus-one. Not that she minded. Free tickets to one of rock’s finest? Access to the Amex Lounge? A front-row seat to middle-aged men rediscovering their primal energy? Perhaps not so much that last one. However, she was in, even if Queens of the Stone Age weren’t exactly her first pick.
The evening began in suitably decadent style: a glide through the O2’s labyrinthine VIP corridors to the lounge, that strange liminal space between rock and corporate hospitality, where rebellion meets responsibly sourced artisan gin. We toasted the absence of my friend, the intended gig-buddy, with an overpriced something with chips, then took our places in our “premium seating area”, which, to be fair, offered a glorious view of the carnage to come. And what carnage it was.
Josh Homme and his desert-dwelling death machine came roaring on like a sandstorm in leather boots. From the opening lurch of “No One Knows,” the sound hit like a physical force: thick, swaggering, and utterly relentless. Homme stalked the stage in that casual, untouchable way only he can pull off: half Elvis, half gunslinger, all swagger.
Queens of the Stone Age are a funny proposition in 2023: a band too heavy for the indie crowd, too weird for the metalheads, and far too sexy for the dad-rock brigade and yet, somehow, they unify them all in a sweat-soaked communion. The O2 crowd was buzzing, beers in hand, ready to be bludgeoned.
The setlist was a dream for long-timers: “Go With the Flow,” “If I Had a Tail,” “Smooth Sailing,” and the monstrous “Little Sister,” each delivered with the kind of groove that made you question whether Homme’s guitar was plugged into an amp or directly into the molten core of the planet.
My daughter, to her credit, held her own amid the storm. Between numbers, I glanced over to check she wasn’t plotting escape, but there she was, nodding along, face lit by strobes, looking faintly exhilarated and slightly terrified. At one point, during “Song for the Dead,” she turned to me and mouthed, “This is really loud.” Yes. Yes, it was.
But that’s the point. Queens of the Stone Age don’t just play music, they detonate it. Every riff is a precision-engineered weapon, every pause a sucker punch. Homme, meanwhile, treats the entire O2 like his personal dive bar; crooning, teasing, prowling the edge of chaos and diving headfirst into the crowd, all 6’3” of him.
By the encore, “A Song for the Deaf”, followed by the pulverising “God Is in the Radio”, faces had melted, ears had surrendered, and any notion of musical subtlety had been permanently obliterated. It was loud, it was lewd, it was pretty great.
As the lights came up, I turned to my daughter. She looked both stunned and smiling, like someone who’d just survived a hurricane and found it oddly life-affirming. “That,” she said, “was… something.” Which, frankly, is all you can really say after Josh Homme has rearranged your internal organs via soundwave.