Queens Of The Stone Age
Royal Hospital Kilmainham
★★★★★
Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme asks the Kilmainham audience what they want to hear. Someone calls for Straight Jacket Fitting, the epic closer from their most recent studio album, 2023’s In Times New Roman…, where Homme howls about freeing your demons so you can face them down.
As the song progresses and the band coax strangled riffs from their instruments, Homme descends towards the crowd, leaning over the barrier here, stealing a kiss there, until he throws himself over the steel barricade completely and wades through the gobsmacked throng. “Break it down, boys,” he orders as he moves fearlessly through the melee. “I could attack at any moment,” he warns those around him before demanding they “part the seas” so he can clamber back on stage. “I like to be touched,” he hisses.
Before this, we’ve had everything from the devil boogie of No One Knows delivered in front of a ballroom curtain backdrop drenched by boudoir red spotlights, and the serpentine strut of Smooth Sailing as the same lights turned alcopop yellow, to the shaking maracas and ominous bass creep of My God Is The Sun, and a razor-sharp Made to Parade which sounded like T. Rex leading a barbarian horde over the city walls, feather boas and axes swinging in unison.
It’s refreshing, after hearing the same guitar solo played again and again for two hours on the other side of town last Sunday, to see a band stretching out, delivering the oil tanker-heavy Negative Space one minute and the jittery industrial new wave of Time & Place the next. That song features both a cacophonic slide solo from Troy Van Leeuwen and a slightly middle eastern modulation to Homme’s voice. If prog wasn’t a four-letter word, I’d use it.
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Homme certainly seemed to be having a great time, stating repeatedly how much Ireland means to him and how wonderful it is to be back. He had a good laugh at both the crowd chanting “Deano” when he introduces multi-instrumentalist Dean Fertita and singing happy birthday, despite his critique that it sounded like two drunk drivers crashing into each other, to the ridiculously cool Michael Shuman, a man who plays bass like he’s crowbarring a safe.
Every song warrants mention whether it’s the furious pace of Little Sister or the deceptively gentle extended groove of Make It Wit Chu, wherein Homme worries security by encouraging people to get up on each other’s shoulders and the band segue seamlessly into The Rolling Stones’ Miss You. But with Song For The Dead, the place goes feral. Jon Theodore has been pummelling his drums with such abandon throughout, it’s like he’s trying to tunnel to the airport, but he somehow finds another gear for this final song (QOTSA don’t need encores). Once the band pile in on top of him, Kilmainham explodes and each false finish has it erupting again with cathartic glee.
While many were disappointed by the absence of support act Amyl and The Sniffers, although hats off to Cork’s Cliffords who stepped in at the last moment and have a star in the making with frontwoman Iona Lynch, all mutterings were silenced by the sheer power of the headliners. The only complaints I can muster at a push are for the songs they didn’t play, such as If I Had A Tail or Emotion Sickness, but only a fool would grumble at one of the greatest rock’n’roll bands in the world cutting loose like sailors on a weekend pass and a set that was lean as a holy man in a desert. Ferocious.
