Live Report: QOTSA’s The End Is Nero World Tour touches down in Kilmainham for one hell of a show

It is the final days of The End Is Nero World Tour, which has been trundling across the globe since August 2023 to support Queens of the Stone Ages’ eighth studio album, In Times New Roman. There have been north of a hundred dates, across ten legs with the beast finally wrapping in Sheffield in a week. Josh Homme, boss of QTOSA, is in no great rush however, waiting for the sun to drop over the western horizon, before strolling on, hands in pockets with his if-GQ-did-the-Wild-Bunch-looking posse. Strapping on their guitars, they hock into ‘Regular John’, the opening track from their 1998 eponymous debut album and we’re off.

Back in the late nineties ‘Regular John’ was the calling card of an album that evolved the sound of stoner rock through a myriad of 70’s hard rock and grunge into a trance groove that both fascinated and hypnotised. The latter effect peaks tonight on ‘Negative Space’ and ‘Misfit Love’ as the QOTSA gang wig out, through the space that despite the sonic onslaught, they marvellously create.

Queens of The Stone Age at Royal Hospital Kilmainham on August 20, 2025. Photo: Peter O'Hanlon.

That sense of space, really is a marvel, setting the sound of QOTSA apart from oft compared grunge, something striking when they hock into the second song of the night - Songs for Deaf cut ‘No One Knows’. A pair of …Like Clockwork tracks – ‘Smooth Sailing’ and ‘My God Is The Sun’ - set the tempo of the evening - martial, slashing guitars chasing drummer Jon Theodore, who brilliantly beats the lard out of his kit for the guts of two hours, even during the opening calm of ‘I Never Came’.

Before ‘I Sat by the Ocean’, smoking a cigarette, Homme introduces the band – the aforementioned Jon Theodore, guitarists Troy van Leeuwen and Dean Fertita, the latter who sparks an impromptu mass chanting of “Deano! Deano! Deano!” – before wishing bassist Michael Shuman a Happy 40th birthday, who stands coolly smoking a cig, sipping a drink – the crowd serenading him, so poorly, that Homme is forced to good-naturedly chastise them for “sounding like two cars full of drunk drivers that smash into one another.”

He has a great way with the crowd, does Homme, connecting with the Kilmainham mass at his ease – transforming the stage into an intimate lounge whilst playing piano and quaffing wine on ‘The Vampyre of Time and Memory'; getting people clambering up on partner’s shoulders as he spectacularly meshes ‘Make It Wit Chu’ with The Stones’ ‘Miss You’ before casting votes from the crowd for ‘Straight Jacket Fitting’ and leaping into the crowd to sing it; ambling through surprised and delighted punters for a lengthy distance, so far you wonder is he heading off to The Patriots Inn, down on the South Circular Road for a pint, whilst he sings about facing down demons, assuring security that he doesn’t need help, no shit, nobody’s going to mess with that guy.

It’s a staggering piece of showmanship, a show highlight, before he clambers back onto stage and the band dive into ‘Go With The Flow’ and showstopper ‘A Song for the Dead’, Homme and his Queens of the Stone Age leaving everything on the Kilmainham stage.