Gig review: Queens of the Stone Age at Piece Hall, Halifax

“It's so good to be here,” Josh Homme tells a raucous crowd sprawled across Halifax’s Piece Hall, after Queens of the Stone Age have bludgeoned them with an opening one-two of Go With the Flow and The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret. He pauses and then wryly shrugs. “It’s so good to be anywhere, frankly.”

The loaded throwaway is not lost on those in attendance. Muscularly arousing and absorbingly mellifluous, the Seattle-formed five-piece – a misdenomination of a kind, given Homme remains the only original member – are returning from an elongated hiatus that has left its mark on their bandleader.

A messy divorce protracted in public and a cancer battle played out in private is the least of it; their creative dynamism is now scarred by the ghosts of departed friends and dysfunctional fallout.

QOTSA have always danced with darkness, but never have they felt so mortal. The stage has always been their preferred catharsis however, and this first British show in five years is an anticipated response; under blue Calderdale skies cleansed by earlier storms, the desert rock mainstays take a scorched earth approach so loud that it threatens to crack the historic mortar and stonework around them, a Grade I-listed performance earth-shaking enough to trigger seismometers as far away as Skipton.

All laconic drawl and quick draw, Homme shares kinship with the hotshots of grainy revisionist westerns. Now sporting a flyaway fringe and greyed goatee, he has matured into the weathered gunslinger, ably drawn to the material from comeback record In Times New Roman... with its live weight and feel.

Carnavoyeur’s stoner-psych workout and the finessed AOR boogie groove of Negative Space already slot in seamlessly next to the blues shuffle behind Smooth Sailing.

Even without several hits – Make It Wit Chu and Feel Good Hit of the Summer are conspicuous absences – there is still a steady supply of classic post-millennial favourites long since enshrined as indie dancefloor staples; Little Sister, The Way You Used to Do and No One Knows all land euphorically.

Battery Acid is aired for the first time in a dozen years, next to I Appear Missing’s woozy release; elsewhere, a tribute to late member Mark Lanegan, led by In the Fade, is rapturously received.

“This isn’t goodbye, but it is good night,” Homme murmurs before A Song for the Dead blows Halifax away one more time. What a good night it is too.