Queens of the Stone Age decided to turn the key and start the engine on their 2023 U.S. Tour in a very fitting place – the Motor City. And it was clear from the opening riff of “No One Knows” that there was no rust on one of America’s iconic and powerful rock and roll bands.
After a triumphant return on the battlegrounds of Boston Calling and Sonic Temple, Queens of the Stone Age kicked off their “End Is Nero Tour” tour at the Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill in Sterling Heights on Thursday to a packed and welcoming crowd that smiled, swayed and pumped their collective fists to the heavens with every familiar and even not-so-familiar tune in the QOTSA arsenal.
The tour, which is helping promote the band’s amazing new record, “In Times New Roman,” will hit 28 cities and wrap up Oct. 8 in Sacramento. In “In Times New Roman,” the band’s eighth studio album, they rock some heavy subjects, from divorce to death to the end of the world (at least as we know it).
Rolling Stone magazine said of the new record: “After the dance-rock experimentation of Villains, the band has returned to the clockwork riffage that has characterized the best of their work going back to their self-titled 1998 debut.”
And that’s a good thing – great thing!
The band played four songs – Negative Space, Carnavoyeur, Time & Place and Paper Machete – off the new album and all sounded not only vibrant but relevant and fit in nicely with the older material on the set list.
The band’s founder and frontman Josh Homme has faced some difficult challenges off the stage recently, including divorce, a child-custody battle and cancer but he performed as if the world was his stage and we were all fortunate enough to be there with him. He smiled, laughed, engaged and rocked!
The End Is Nero tour is an invitation from Homme and QOTSA to “leave your judgment at the door, bring anything and everything else.” And that was clearly the vibe at Freedom Hill Thursday night.
SEE WLAA-D PHOTOGALLERY HERE
Queens of the Stone Age, formed in 1996 in Seattle, features Homme alongside Troy Van Leeuwen (guitar, lap steel, keyboard, percussion, backing vocals), Michael Shuman (bass guitar, keyboard, backing vocals), Dean Fertita (keyboards, guitar, percussion, backing vocals), and Jon Theodore (drums, percussion). The band was tight and clearly locked in all night long.
Mother Nature provided the perfect weather, Freedom Hill presented the ideal venue and Queens of the Stone Age delivered a crushing – almost cathartic – night of music as the band pulled out of the garage on its new tour on what promises to be a thrilling and hard rocking road trip.
For upcoming tour dates, click HERE
To order In Times New Roman…, shop HERE
SETLIST
- No One Knows
- Do It Again
(Tour debut) - Smooth Sailing
- My God Is the Sun
- Carnavoyeur
- The Way You Used to Do
- If I Had a Tail
- Negative Space
- Paper Machete
- The Evil Has Landed
- Better Living Through Chemistry
(Tour debut; first electric performance since 2014) - I Sat by the Ocean
- Time & Place
- Little Sister
- Make It Wit Chu
(Dedicated to fans holding up… more ) - God Is in the Radio
(Dedicated to Mark Lanegan) - Go With the Flow
- A Song for the Dead
PHOTO GALLERY OF SUPPORTING ACT THE ARMED HERE
PHOTO GALLERY OF SUPPORTING ACT PHANTOGRAM HERE
