Queens Of The Stone Age: “Now that everybody’s feeling good, I don’t think we want to take as much time away”

One of the best concert films of recent times, Queens Of The Stone Age’s Alive In The Catacombs finds the Californian rockers delivering a stripped back performance in the titular location, which famously contains the remains of six million people. As frontman Josh Homme wanders singing through the subterranean tunnels, in front of the walls of skulls, the effect is brilliantly haunting and memorable.

What’s almost as remarkable is the circumstances of the recording. With Homme having tried for almost 20 years to secure filming approval from Paris city officials, a small window eventually opened up in July of 2024, when QOTSA were in the middle of the tour for their 2023 album In Times New Roman...

The reemergence of health issues linked to a previous cancer diagnosis severely impacted the frontman’s ability to perform, and the band even had to cancel a concert close to the appointed filming date.

Although the extent of Homme’s pain is clearly evident in the accompanying behind the scenes film, Alive In Paris And Before, he showed phenomenal resilience to press ahead, resulting in the extraordinary final film.

When I meet Queens guitarist and keyboardist Dean Fertita in a room in IMMA, before the band’s recent performance at the Dublin venue – next door, his bandmate Troy Van Leeuwen and a couple of crew are attempting to nail down a synth sound – I mention that the back story of Alive In The Catacombs gives you pause to wonder if such moments are somehow fated.

“There really are a lot of layers,” nods the softly spoken Fertita. “For a start, Josh had been trying to get permission to do the performance for a long time. I’d heard it mentioned over the years, and obviously it’s a vey compelling idea, but you did wonder if we could ever make it happen. It took a lot of back and forth for everything to fall into place.

“But then you have the circumstances of how it all eventually fell into place. With Josh’s health situation, really we all just wanted him to be well. To be honest, there aren’t too many people who would have kept going the way he did – seeing him in that pain was very difficult. But with the opportunity to create something so special and unique, he wanted to make it happen.”

Given the narrow time-frame, there also wasn’t much to rehearse.

“We did a bit of work, and there was a walk-through the day before, which some of us actually couldn’t make it to,” Fertita reflects. “So yeah, there really wasn’t much time at all. Then you’re dealing with other factors, like the particular acoustics down there, and asking the other musicians to play stringed imstruments in a way they usually wouldn’t. Once the filming gets underway, you definitely feel the pressure; you’re thinking, ‘I don’t want to fuck up!’ But the atmosphere and energy are so different – you’re down there with the remains of six million people and it’s unbelievably powerful.”

The quick turnaround also led to some inspired improvisation. As a tired Homme lay down on a table in the catacombs, director Thomas Rames decided it would be a great way to start the film. Thus it commences with the frontman rising up and beginning to sing, with the group going on to deliver stunning versions of tracks like ‘Villains Of Circumstance’ and ‘Suture Up Your Future’.

“It was such a powerful way to open,” agrees Fertita. “I saw bits and pieces as the film was coming together, and we’d be listening to mixes and things like that. But I didn’t really get to watch it in its finished form until a couple of weeks after the screenings went down. I was blown away by the job the cinematographers did. The crew was amazing and the sound mix was incredible.

“There were just some very powerful moments in the way it was shot – it was stuff I didn’t really get to experience until well after the fact.”

As Homme has explained when discussing the film, the improvisational feel even extended to the instruments.

“A couple of weeks before rehearsal, we spent a day going to a hardware store looking for things that could be used as percussion instruments,” explains Dean. “That’s the coolest thing about performing in that way – all prefabricated ideas are gone and we can just do whatever we want to make music out of anything. It’s interesting and inspiring. It’s like, ‘Give Jon chains!’”

Homme mentions at one point in the making-of doc that time seems to stand still in the catacombs, and that vibe certainly radiates off the screen.

“I agree,” says Dean. “During the recording, you know you’re in what could potentially be this amazing combination of sound and image. But you don’t know until you know, and I was just so proud when I got to see the finished product.”

Thankfully Homme made it through the filming okay, with the band subsequently taking a break.

“After the filming, he got on the next flight to LA and went straight into the hospital,” recalls Dean. “Ultimately, the break lasted almost a full year. And when we left, we honestly didn’t know if that was the last thing we’d ever do. We had no idea – it was that serious.”

Aside from Homme’s immediate health condition, the singer had also endured an exceptionally rough few years. As well as the cancer diagnosis, he had also gone through a divorce and lost close friends, including ex-QOTSA member Mark Lanegan, who passed away in Killarney in February 2022.

Then there was Homme’s other band, Eagles Of Death Metal, and their history in Paris. It’s now almost 10 years since the terrorist attack during the group’s concert at the Bataclan, which left 90 people dead.

Although Homme wasn’t present, such an horrendous incident would obviously take an enormous psychological and emotional toll.

“So many connections to that city,” says Dean simply, “and all of them very heavy.”

How has the reaction been to Alive In The Catacombs?

“I was very curious to see how it was received, and it seems people are very accepting of it,” says Fertita. “It’s wonderful, because it opens new doors for us, knowing that we can play in that way and people will listen. I’ve always felt that Josh thrives in these intimate moments. Sometimes the nuances of his lyrics aren’t as easy to be heard when we’re playing so loud all the time.

“He’s a very conversational person and he can really bring a room in. So to have the opportunity now to really go play in that way is gonna be great. In terms of doing similar stuff, I don’t see why not – it would be wonderful to have that as an option. The thing is, when we go back to the heavier songs, I fucking love that too!

“We love both, so if it’s all on the table, and everyone is excited to see it that way, then it’s better for us.”

Speaking of heavier material, on early QOTSA material like ‘Mexicola’ and ‘Walkin On The Sidewalks’, the pulverising doom metal riffs have a Black Sabbath-type feel. How did the the band react to the recent passing of Ozzy Osbourne?

“I think everyone is affected by that in some way,” says Fertita. “He’s been part of everybody’s musical lives. I wasn’t in the band on the first record – Mikey and I joined on the same day in 2007, so we came in right before the start of the Era Vulgaris tour. If you were to talk to Josh, I don’t think he would say that wasn’t a direct influence. But I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what other conversations were being had!”

Released in 2007, Era Vulgaris – the band’s fifth album – was a particularly brilliant showcase for Queens’ stylistic range, with the record moving from the Devo-go-metal jerky rhythms of ‘Turnin’ On The Screw’ to the punishing rifforama of ‘Sick, Sick, Sick’. And then there was the album’s breakout hit, the R&B-tinged ‘Make It Wit Chu’, now one of their biggest live favourites (during the band’s bravura IMMA set, the tune even found Homme brilliantly interpolating a part of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Miss You’).

Was Fertita around for the album’s recording?

“No, we came in after the record was done,” he replies. “It was the strangest audition, I’d guess you’d call it. I personally didn’t even know what instrument I was going to be playing. It was just like, ‘Here, learn some songs!’ Then I came in and it was like, ‘Okay cool, I guess they got a bass player now.’ So we did one or two rehearsals at a studio, and then went out to Joshua Tree and recorded.

“That was our trial by fire and it was the best thing ever. We spent a few days out there, staying up late and making music. We were indirectly in stuff that was released as b-sides for that record, but we weren’t on the actual album. In terms of that record’s range, that’s all of our goal. In a way, we want to be undefinable. We can do this thing, and that thing, and they can be completely opposite, but you can feel the connection.”

MASTERPIECE

In putting together a Queens episode of the Hot Press Classics podcast prior to the band’s Dublin gig, I made the case that they are in contention for the title of greatest rock band ever. Certainly, there seems to be increasing consensus that the group’s 2002 masterpiece, Songs For The Deaf, is possibly the greatest rock album of the 21st century.

“I wouldn’t argue,” says Dean. “When I was in my early twenties, I was working in a record store in Detroit, and I used to listen to the first album, Rated R and Songs For The Deaf all the time. Never in a million years imagining that I’d one day be playing those songs. So yeah, I’ve been a fan for a long time too.

“When the opportunity came up to join, I was very excited. It was a very fortunate set of circumstances. In 2006, I was touring with The Raconteurs. Our front of house guy, Hutch, was also Queens’ front of house guy. He was like, ‘These guys are about to go on the road and I know they need somebody.’ Apparently that’s how Troy got in too – Hutch was the middle man. I feel very honoured to be introduced through that channel.”

Songs For The Deaf has such a brilliant blend of noise and melody.

“It goes back to that aspect of Josh I think is going to be really wonderful to see on display in an acoustic setting.”

With the band’s End Is Nero tour now complete, October finds them heading out on a short excursion to promote Alive In The Catacombs. After that, they have any plans?

“It’s affected us a lot that we’ve had such a start-stop thing for the last couple of years,” says Dean. “Now that everybody’s feeling good, I don’t think we want to take as much time away. We’re really enjoying playing and it was really unfortunate what happened last summer. I felt like we had never been better, so there’s no plans to walk away from it for any length of time.”

• Alive In The Catacombs and Alive In Paris And Before are both available now from qotsa.com. The Alive In The Catacombs EP is also out now.