Queens of the Stone Age

There is a sound that belongs only to Queens of the Stone Age: a heavy riff that repeats until it turns hypnotic, a dirty groove that moves the body before you decide to move it, and a general sensation of heat and menace. Josh Homme called it "robot rock", and he meant it more seriously than as a joke: the idea was to pound a mechanical figure until it got under the skin. What is almost always told wrong is where that band comes from. The easy account says it all begins in the California desert, and the desert is there, but between Kyuss and Queens lie two years and almost two thousand kilometres: Homme put this group together after passing through Seattle, playing for other people. And the sound that made him famous is not one voice alone, but two taking turns.

Kyuss, the desert and two years in Seattle

Kyuss came from Palm Desert and was one of the bands that founded stoner rock: heavy, slow, psychedelic, born at clandestine parties in the middle of the desert where the electricity came from a generator and there were no neighbours to complain. Homme played guitar and Nick Oliveri bass. That landscape stayed inside his way of understanding a song: long, repetitive tracks, of empty highway.

Kyuss broke up in 1995 and Homme did not put anything together straight away. He moved to Seattle and joined Screaming Trees as touring guitarist, in the same scene that had already produced Soundgarden and Chris Cornell. There he met Mark Lanegan, Screaming Trees' singer, and a good part of what came afterwards comes out of that encounter. Without Seattle there is no Queens of the Stone Age.

In 1996 he set up a project he called Gamma Ray and in 1997 he had to rename it, because the German band of the same name threatened to sue. The new name came from a nickname used by producer Chris Goss. The first album, self-titled, came out in 1998 with Oliveri —again from Kyuss— on bass and as second voice, not as a guest: he was the real human link between the two bands.

Two voices taking turns

Rated R (2000) put them on the map and Songs for the Deaf (2002) installed them among the best of their time. That second album has Dave Grohl playing the drums from start to finish, and out of it came "No One Knows", with its unforgettable time signature, and "Go with the Flow". It is worth saying that no award came with it: "No One Knows" was nominated for a Grammy in 2003 and did not win, and the band has accumulated nine nominations and zero statuettes.

But the album cannot be explained without Mark Lanegan, who was a full member of the group between 2001 and 2005. His voice —deep, worn, the polar opposite of Homme's falsetto— takes the lead on "Song for the Dead", "Hangin' Tree" and "God Is in the Radio", and before that he had sung "In the Fade" on Rated R. He is also the one who opens Lullabies to Paralyze (2005) with "This Lullaby". That handover between two opposing voices is constitutive of the sound: the heat and the menace we were talking about at the start are, to a large extent, the contrast between those two registers.

Then came Era Vulgaris (2007) and ...Like Clockwork (2013), which was their first number one on the American Billboard 200 and the darkest and most elegant album of all. Grohl turned up there again, but in another part: he came in when the recording was a third of the way through and Joey Castillo had left it, and ended up playing six of the ten tracks. Villains (2017) and In Times New Roman (2023) followed.

The ultimatum, the sacking and two deaths a month apart

The "open collective that a great many musicians passed through" is a comfortable phrase that hides the hardest departure. Homme sacked Nick Oliveri in 2004 and said it in so many words: the reason was accusations that he had physically assaulted his girlfriend, after a previous ultimatum. It was not a creative rotation or a change of direction: it was throwing out a friend of twenty years over something Homme decided not to tolerate.

2022 brought them two losses a month apart. Mark Lanegan died on 22 February at his home in Killarney, Ireland, at the age of fifty-seven, with no cause disclosed. Taylor Hawkins, Foo Fighters' drummer, died on 25 March in Bogotá. Both were close to Homme, and the two deaths went through the same circle of friends in five weeks.

The following years were full of shocks. In 2023 Homme revealed that he had been through surgery for cancer, and in July 2024 an emergency operation forced the tour to be cancelled; the two things should not be assumed to be related, because he did not say so. In June 2025 they released Alive in the Catacombs, an acoustic recording made in the Paris catacombs, and there is a ninth album announced, Perfecth, whose date appears crossed out in the announcement trailer itself: better not to take it as firm.

What to remember

Queens of the Stone Age proved that hard rock does not have to be stupid: it can be hypnotic, danceable and elegant without turning the volume down. But their story is less clean than their sound. It was not simply born of the desert, but of a guitarist with no band who went off to Seattle to play for other people, and it is not the work of a single author, but of a group where Oliveri put in the bass and half the aggression, Lanegan the second voice and Grohl, twice, the drums.

That way of clearing things out is in the account as well. In 2004 Homme chose the scandal of giving the real reason for a sacking over the empty statement, and what was at stake was a woman's safety: in Chile, SernamEG's 1455 gives guidance on gender-based violence twenty-four hours a day, free of charge and confidentially. What remains, in any case, sounds on its own: that riff that repeats and will not let go, with two voices taking turns on top.

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Sources

Queens of the Stone Age is an American rock band led by guitarist and singer Josh Homme. Homme was guitarist of Kyuss, formed in Palm Desert, California, and considered a pioneer of stoner rock, alongside bassist Nick Oliveri; Kyuss broke up in 1995. After the break-up, Homme moved to Seattle and worked as touring guitarist for Screaming Trees, Mark Lanegan's band. In 1996 he formed the project Gamma Ray, renamed Queens of the Stone Age in 1997 in the face of a legal threat from the German band of the same name; the name comes from a nickname used by producer Chris Goss. The first album, self-titled, was released in 1998, with Oliveri as bassist and second voice. "Rated R" was released in 2000 and "Songs for the Deaf" in 2002, the latter with Dave Grohl playing the drums throughout the record; it includes "No One Knows" and "Go with the Flow". "No One Knows" was nominated for a Grammy in 2003 and did not win the award: the band has nine nominations and no Grammy. Mark Lanegan was a full member of the group between 2001 and 2005; he sang lead vocals on "In the Fade" ("Rated R") and on "Song for the Dead", "Hangin' Tree" and "God Is in the Radio" ("Songs for the Deaf"), and opens "Lullabies to Paralyze" (2005) with "This Lullaby". Homme sacked Nick Oliveri in 2004 and stated that the reason was accusations that Oliveri had physically assaulted his girlfriend, following a previous ultimatum. "Era Vulgaris" (2007) and "...Like Clockwork" (2013) followed, the latter the band's first album to reach number one on the American Billboard 200, recorded in part with Grohl, who joined when the session was a third of the way through following Joey Castillo's departure and plays six of the ten tracks; afterwards, "Villains" (2017) and "In Times New Roman" (2023). Mark Lanegan died on 22 February 2022 at his home in Killarney, Ireland, at the age of 57; the cause was not disclosed. Taylor Hawkins, Foo Fighters' drummer and also a close friend of Homme's, died on 25 March 2022 in Bogotá. In 2023 Homme revealed that he had had surgery for cancer and in July 2024 an emergency operation forced the group's tour to be cancelled; no connection between the two episodes has been publicly established. In June 2025 they released "Alive in the Catacombs", recorded in the Paris catacombs. A ninth album, "Perfecth", was announced with a release date that appears crossed out in the announcement trailer itself. The term "robot rock" to describe their sound was coined by Homme. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Rolling Stone, Billboard and other coverage.