Review: Queens of the Stone Age at Rock N Roll Circus - Legendary rockers ensure good times are delivered in Yorkshire
Generating their own wind velocity through sheer amplification, the Seattle-born desert rockers deliver a blunt-force payload of pure musical power with concussive might.
“Last night, we had a wonderful time,Sheffield,” Josh Homme says, delightfully louche at the microphone. The Queens of the Stone Age frontman grins. “All I know is I can’t think of a better place for this to end.”
It has been a busy period for the Seattle-born desert rockers since they last played Yorkshire at Halifax’s Piece Hall.
Across the past twenty-four months, they have traversed the globe behind eighth record In Times New Roman…, topped Download Festival and now return for a two-night stand coup at the Don Valley Bowl.
Back then in Calderdale, Homme appeared like a man with a point to prove, bruised from a hard half-decade of personal issues, inhabited by the vibe of a taciturn sheriff keen to set his onetime banditry out to roost.
Another health scare in 2024 forced him off the road again however, with further questions loaded over just what the future held for him and his brand of brawny bangers.
Here, the 52-year-old seems determined to avoid such doubts with an answer designed to blow the roof off the big top tent that he and his bandmates occupy.
Generating their own giddy wind velocity through sheer amplification, QOTSA resolutely inject rock ‘n’ roll into this day-festival’s name with utterly concussive might; a blunt-force payload of pure musical power.
Homme has long understood the attraction to these concrete-rattling slabs as a live proposition; crunching riffs whose swagger is best left to speak for itself.
So it proves as the group unload a cavalcade of gravel-honeyed staples from the word go: No One Knows is dispatched two songs in with bombastic delight, while Smooth Sailing’s snake-hipped disreputability and Little Sister’s frenetic spin prompt no shortage of beery singalongs.
Their singer cuts a different gait too; easier in his own skin again, more mellow than melancholy.
The Vampyre of Time and Memory places him at the piano, red wine and cigarette in tow, for a superlative singalong rendition; later, he threads the disco call-and-refrain of the Rolling Stones’ Miss You into an extended coda through Make It Wit Chu.
When closer A Song for the Dead has to be halted for a crowd emergency, it is his humanity that shines through.
“We’re only here to have a good time,” Homme proclaims before he brings it all home. Perhaps against the odds, he is still here to ensure the good times are delivered.