According to a recent press release from Matador records, Queens of the Stone Age singer, multi instrumentalist, and visionary, Josh Homme,“had dreamt of staging a QOTSA performance in the Catacombs since his first visit nearly 20 years ago,” but Paris had never allowed any artist to play within the Catacombs – until 2024, when QOTSA became the first and only act to be granted the honor.
On their decision, the Paris Catacombs shared via Matador’s release:
“Going underground and confronting reflections on death can be a deeply intense experience. Josh seems to have felt in his body and soul the full potential of this place. The recordings resonate perfectly with the mystery, history, and a certain introspection, notably perceptible in the subtle use of the silence within the Catacombs.”
As account of both the relative physical remoteness and deep spiritual significance of the recording location, Alive At The Catacombs is stripped of QOTSA’s usual heavy fuzz, resulting in “[the band] at their most intimate, yet surrounded by literally millions of human remains—’the biggest audience we’ve ever played for,’ says Joshua Homme.”
To promote their documentary film, Alive in the Catacombs (June 5th)—which depicts the aforementioned descent and performance in the catacombs of Paris)—and accompanying EP (June 13th), Queens of The Stone Age embarked on a mini-US midsummer tour.
This tour is also part of QOTSA’s greater extended The End Is Nero tour, supporting their most recent studio album, In Times New Roman. Released in 2023, the album’s promotional cycle was prolonged by issues with Homme’s health, which forced the mid-tour cancellation of twenty-one shows in 2024.
Beside Homme, the band’s lineup is rounded out by Jon Philip Theodore on drums, Michael Shuman on bass, Troy Van Leeuwen on guitar and keyboard, and Dean Fertita, also on guitar and keyboard.
They arrived at Kembra Live! on June 17th, the midpoint of their tour and played a ‘Rizzler sizzler’ of a show. The night prior to their Columbus set, the group were introduced to America’s sweetheart, Christian “The Rizzler” Joseph, by comedian Theo Von at a Nashville comedy club in a meeting which indubitably wormed its way the band’s performance the following night.
With temperatures soaring on the hottest and muggiest day thus-far of 2025, this was not a show for the weak. Nevertheless, thousands of fans braved the sweltering conditions for hours before the doors opened, with last year’s cancellations serving as a catalyst for a deeper need to be as close to the band as possible.
Queens of The Stone Age opened with 2004’s mechanical “Little Sister,” capturing the crowd from the jump. With the group’s impressive catalogue, the night’s treasure trove setlist especially showed off the band’s range.
In the first half of the night, the band soared right into a couple tunes from their 2013 work …Like Clockwork. They began with“Smooth Sailing,” then “My God is the Sun,” into “I sat by the Ocean,” and finally “If I had a Tail”. Shuman shone especially bright through the moody, dramatic basslines that make this album many fans’ favorite. Nestled between these hits were a couple more from In Times New Roman, including “Emotional Sickness,” “Carnavoyeur,” and the addictive “Paper Machete.”
The performance of “3’s & 7’s” near two-thirds of the way through the show, brought an onslaught of large-scale moshing and crowdsurfing. Next, the band cooled it down with two more tunes from Era Vulgaris: first the broodingly low “Suture up My Future,” followed by the blissful, semi-Rolling-Stonesian hit, “Make it wit chu.”
The unexpected highlight of the night came with “You Can’t Quit Me Baby,” from the group’s 1998 self-titled debut album, which featured an extended version of the already lingering outro.
Usually a crew-cut-queen, Homme’s hair stepped out with a tight buzzcut as The Kills’ Allison Mosshart took shears to the singer’s hair in Kemba Live!’s green room earlier that night. On stage, the singer channeled his inner Clairo, both by drinking red wine out of a glass onstage, as well as through his overall quiet, nonchalant demeanor. The stage presentation— simple silky pieces of fabric hung from the rafters and flowing in the wind in light— also distantly recalled that of Clairo’s Charm tour.
As the night’s end drew near, rather than feigning goodbye only to grace the crowd with an encore that everyone knew was coming, Homme cut through such theatrics by announcing that he would stay on stage for a few more songs.
These remaining songs came as no surprise, as the band were yet to play several mega-hits from 2002’s Songs for the Deaf, where Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters and Nirvana were the band’s studio and touring drummer. Despite his notorious predecessor, Theodore (himself of The Mars Volta, Royal Trux, and Bright Eyes Fame) was a treat to watch live on the night’s final three particularly energetic songs.
And while the band forewent tradition by fully incorporating the encore, Van Leeuwen’s first single-piano-note strike on “Go with the flow,” served as an initiation signal for a longstanding tradition as fans began to form a churning center in the pit. By the end of megahit “No One Knows,” the rotating swarm had grown into a formidable ‘wall of death,’ which broke into a pedestrian apocalypse midway through the chaotic finale, “Song for the Dead.”
Every so often, you are blessed with a concert so good it will leave you with post-concert depression. As a concert reporter, I attend countless shows and so am not touched by as many artists as I once was, but I will take the memory of this Queens of the Stone Age show with me to the grave.
If you missed this concert, they will be touring again this fall, with a stop at the Fox Theater in Detroit on October 3rd.
Setlist:
- Little Sister
- Smooth Sailing
- Emotional Sickness
- My God Is the Sun
- I Sat by the Ocean
- Paper Machete
- If I Had a Tail
- Time & Place
- Misfit Love
- Carnavoyeur
- The Sky Is Fallin’
- A Song for the Deaf
- You Can’t Quit Me Baby
- 3’s & 7’s
- Suture Up Your Future
- Make It Wit Chu
- Go With the Flow
- No One Knows
- A Song for the Dead
Leave a Reply