For Queens of the Stone Age, nine is the perfecth number.
Next Friday, Oct. 30, Josh Homme and Co. drop Perfecth (via Matador Records), their ninth studio album. The LP collects nine songs, including “Easy Street,” which strolled into our lives in July of this year, and “Where The Goth Girls At?,” which the rockers performed late Wednesday (Oct. 21) on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Bathed in cold blue light, QOTSA sounded tight for their late-night spot, appeared lean and mean.
Perfecth took shape across a series of studios, cities, and timelines, reads a statement. “The reason these songs didn’t get finished until now is because I wasn’t qualified to finish them, yet,” Homme explains.
The record’s songs are said to map different forms of love: of family, friends, and others both significant and insignificant. “The loves that break you beyond survival and the loves that put you back together.”
It’s the followup to 2023’s In Times New Roman, after which the band took some time out from touring as Homme battled ill health. The band called off eight festivals shows on their End Is Nero tour so the frontman could fly back to the U.S. for what was described at the time as “emergency surgery“; another seven European festival gigs slated for August were then pulled due to the health issue. Homme has been open about his health dilemmas in the past, revealing in 2023 that he’d undergone surgery for cancer after being diagnosed in 2022.
That was then. The five piece — Homme, Troy Van Leeuwen, Michael Shuman, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore –- are back out on the road. Next up, a concert Saturday (Oct. 24) in Iceland, followed by Nov. 16 CORE / Sweet Stuff Foundation Benefit at L.A.’s The Wiltern, and a run of shows in Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
The title of the new album, admits Homme, “is funny when you’re in a group, but it ain’t so f—ing funny when you’re alone and you realize how imperfect everything is. It’s the struggle.”
Watch QOTSA’s late-night performance below.
