Josh Homme has given an interesting interview with Rolling Stone about Queens Of The Stone Age’s seventh album, the “dancey” Villains.
Along with drawing a sonic line from QOTSA to ‘Uptown Funk’, Homme speaks about the horrifying 2015 terrorist attack at an Eagles of Death Metal show in Paris. Although Homme wasn’t at the show, it affected him deeply.
“It affected the way I did everything,” he explains. “It reinforced that you shouldn’t wait to do something or you’ll fucking regret it. Move now. If you have a beef with someone, squash it. If you want to do something, do it.”
This is evident on the new album. “The one line that is sewn through the record is the idea of ‘now’. Now is all you’ll ever get, and there’s no reason for you to wait. If you wait to do something, you’re probably making a mistake.”
The recent Manchester attacks at Ariana Grande’s concert obviously drew parallels between the two. “It’s a terrifying club to be part of,” he says. “You hope it never gets any bigger now than two artists. If you could trade places, you actually wouldn’t, because someone else would understand that. I don’t think I would wish that on anybody else. … There’s always been fucked-up shit. There’s always been villains. All it does is give you the raison d’être to go again. If you needed a fucking reason, you got one.
“I refuse to philosophically feel any different than I always do,” he says. “This is what I want to do, and I’m gonna do that. It’s just always a desire. You can call it being free; you can call it being American; you can call it being punk rock; or you can call it being a banana-fucking-head. I don’t care what you call it. I’m gonna go do what we do, no matter what.”
