Palm Desert, CA · desert rock · alt-rock

Queens of the Stone Age

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Josh Homme's robot-boogie riffs — heavy music with a lounge singer's sense of swing and menace, desert-rock royalty at full strut.

Queens of the Stone Age began life in 1996 as Gamma Ray, a Seattle project Josh Homme started shortly before returning to Palm Desert, California. A lawsuit threat from a German metal band of the same name forced a change, and Homme settled on Queens of the Stone Age, a name borrowed from a nickname the producer Chris Goss had once given Kyuss.

Homme had previously played in Kyuss, whose work helped define the desert rock sound around Palm Desert. He has remained the band's only constant member through a long list of contributors drawn from across the American rock underground.

The 1998 self-titled debut had Homme playing nearly every instrument himself, with drums handled by former Kyuss member Alfredo Hernández. Nick Oliveri soon joined as co-lead vocalist alongside keyboardist and guitarist Dave Catching, and the band's major-label debut, Rated R (2000), featured guest vocals from Mark Lanegan and the single 'The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret.' Songs for the Deaf (2002) brought in Dave Grohl on drums.

After Oliveri and Lanegan left in 2004 and 2005, Homme became sole lead vocalist for Lullabies to Paralyze (2005) and Era Vulgaris (2007). The band signed to Matador Records in 2013 and released a loose trilogy, ...Like Clockwork (2013), Villains (2017) and In Times New Roman... (2023), with ...Like Clockwork becoming its first album to top the Billboard 200. The lineup since 2013 has paired Homme with Troy Van Leeuwen, Michael Shuman, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore.

The music is built on repetitive, tightly wound riffs, dry production and a rhythmic push that owes as much to boogie and glam as to metal. Homme's falsetto and deadpan delivery sit against that machinery, and the songs often trade in sardonic menace. The band has picked up nine Grammy nominations and became one of the most commercially successful acts to come out of the stoner rock scene.

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desert rockalt-rock