No one reviewed Queens of the Stone Age, so I'm going to do it.

An epic night of hip swings and guitar swagger from the man who found his groove again.

Feb 29, 2024

Josh Homme is sauntering through the masses gathered at Spark Arena.

One hand clutches a microphone, the other reaches out, encouraging his disciples to come forward, to touch him, to hold him, to grab him, to sing with him, to pour it all out.

He ventures deeper into the venue as arms and phones reach for him, then turns and heads into the middle of the moshpit.

Fans swarm around him.

Then Homme stops.

He turns.

He sings.

He’s standing right in front of me.

This moment – one of many epic parts of a beautifully rowdy, often aggressive, consistently grunty and really rather beautiful Auckland show from Queens of the Stone Age – was a long time coming.

Since their last show here in 2017, Homme has been through more than most: a high-profile divorce, a lower-profile battle with cancer, and the loss of a whole bunch of his best friends.

As Homme told me when we last spoke: “When the world went into exile, I was already there … I didn’t pick up the guitar for three-and-a-half years.”

He poured it all into In Times New Roman…, Queens’ brutal comeback album that sounded beefier than they’d been in a very long time.

But the question remained: could Queens still rock like the Queens of old?

Judging by his ecstatic hip-swinging antics, the man dubbed the “ginger Elvis” has become fully reacquainted with his tool of choice.

Last night was full-on, frenetic and fast-paced, more than two hours of Queens hits peppered with new stuff and heartfelt missives from Homme that felt real and raw.

(No one else reviewed the show, but I guess that’s no surprise.)

With ‘No One Knows’ kicking things off, I don’t think I’ve heard a band sound that good straight out the gate in Spark Arena’s often echoey surrounds.

I also don’t think I’ve seen a band so obviously happy to be there. “Let’s fucking dance,” Homme told the crowd, often. “Hit it, boys.”

I also haven’t seen a stage show that impressive in a long time.

On previous tours, Queens have come with a pretty bare-boned show, but this was something else entirely, a pyramid of lights that towered over the band and provided a constantly shifting sci-fi space spectacle.

At many points I wouldn’t have been surprised if the entire thing fired up booster rockets and jetted off into the night sky.

Occasionally, the music did exactly that, like the twisted turmoil of ‘Emotion Sickness’, Jack Black (again) shaking his shit to ‘Burn the Witch’, the laid back croon of ‘Make It Wit Chu’, and the extended, electric finale, ‘A Song for the Dead’.

But my lasting memory of last night’s show will be Homme, striding through his fans, a preacher with his congregation, back where he belongs.

It turns out his jaunt into the crowd had a point. Once he’d waded through the mosh and made it out the other side, Homme approached a man in a leather jacket sitting the front rows. (You can see it here at the 1.23 mark; I encourage you to do so.)

“Dude, you’re the fucking baddest motherfucker I’ve ever seen,” Homme told the man.

Then, for the first time that night, Homme put his microphone down. He held that man’s hand, kissed it, pressed it to his forehead, and stared him in the eyes.

“I’ve given up everything to find you,” he declared. “I love you.”

UPDATE: In an ironic twist, Newshub has just published a review of the show.

I didn’t mean to pepper you with two posts today, but if no one’s going to review a gig that good I felt like someone had to. There are many more shows coming up, and many more stories to tell, so if you liked this, please support me so I can do more.