Josh Homme: "There's A Lot Of New Queens Of The Stone Age Songs"

Josh Homme says he and the rest of Queens of the Stone Age are “itchy” to get back into the studio and record a follow-up to 2013’s acclaimed …Like Clockwork. Homme says the eagerness stems from spending too long touring and wanting to record with drummer Jon Theodore.

“There’s a lot of new songs,” he told CraveOnline. “I’ve been writing a lot on the road and there’s stuff that we didn’t quite pick up to tinker with that was waiting in the wings on the last record that just never got… we had enough. We were having plenty of trouble figuring out those ones, so as not to pick up the other ones. They didn’t really belong on the last record. Some of ’em were too happy.”

Homme explained that expressing happiness and fun in a QOTSA song is difficult and as the band’s primary songwriter he struggles to “reconcile the two things where you play it dark, but you keep it light,” before opening up on his desire to involve new drummer Jon Theodore in more recording.

“I think we’re all so itchy to go back into the studio, in particular because Jon only performed on one song, and we kind of see our future in Jon. His abilities have not been mined in any way, in that there’s so much he can do that takes us into such a weird and beautifully off-kilter position for us.”

“So I think there’s a definite urge to jump back in the studio. I think the hardest part is going to be to regroup and learn how to be home for a second. Cause we really haven’t been home,” Homme added. Indeed, the band has toured relentlessly since releasing …Like Clockwork, including a highly acclaimed and lucrative co-headline tour of Australia and New Zealand with Nine Inch Nails.

Homme also touched on his vocals, which famously drift between a Jack Bruce-like falsetto and a swaggering baritone, though he says they’ll never attempt a death metal scream. “It would be interesting if I could do the death metal scream, to see where we would be at, ’cause who knows? I may have gone, ‘Well, shit, I can do that, so I’ll do that.’ I’m kind of glad that I can’t do that,” he said.

“The truth is, I want to play for the girls,” Homme declared. “And I somehow feel like death metal… I want it to feel like a party, and you have to encourage and incorporate the girls in there too, you know? [Death metal] is categorically unsexy. It’s badass. I’ll listen to Vader, I’ll do it all, but…”

Read the full interview with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme over at CraveOnline!

Gallery: Nine Inch Nails, Queens Of The Stone Age, Brody Dalle – Adelaide Entertainment Centre, 13/03/14

Photos by Peter Coates