Strolling on stage finishing off a cigarette, Josh Homme’s presence releases a sense of escape as I was surrounded by a community of middle aged insurrectionists who seem to be leaving all the stress of the office at home. Seeing as I was part of the minority who were under the age of 25, Queens of the Stone Age brought alive the generation which are socially seen as ‘settled down’ with their music acting as a catalyst to let loose and have a bloody great Saturday Night.  The band brought an atmosphere of absolute fascination as they brought back real gritty raw rock music which in my opinion, hasen’t been seen for a long time.

They opened with the dirty, ‘You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar, but I Feel Like a Millionaire’, which got the crowd headbanging and releasing the inner teenager in them. The band were facile, they didn’t care if the crowd liked them or not, they were preforming as if they was no one there. Watching them project and preform like this made me feel great inside, this is what rock music is meant to be, letting the band do whatever the fuck they want and if the crowd don’t like it, then tough shit.

Once the crowd had warmed up, QOTSA went straight into the well-known banger ‘No One Knows’ which brought a majestic uproar in the arena which consisted of every single person singing the guitar intro with such passion and felicity which continued throughout the night.

The one thing I was most intrigued about before the gig was to see how versatile QOTSA really are. I don’t personally believe you can truly judge a  band’s versatility until you see them live and see if they can convey all in one night in one set. I can confidently say that QOTSA’s versatility was faultless. They provided the crowd with the dirty stompy real rock classics like ‘Monsters in the Parasol’ and ‘Little Sister’ which opened up a reasonable sized mosh pit full of 40 year old slightly (very) merry drunken men which looked like they were having the time of their lives but then toned it down and brought it all back with ’Like Clockwork’ and ‘The Vampyre of Time and Memory’ which united everyone and celebrated all our common interest, the love of good, real rock music.

The band were perfection. They just looked so cool (despite Josh apparently suffering from flu). I couldn’t fault anything; the bass, guitar and vocals were absolutely fantastic. However, I think Jon Theodore deserves special recognition for his amazing drumming skills which had complete control over the drive and passion in the songs.

What I found captivating was how the band didn’t tell the crowd to do anything, not to clap along or ‘hey guys repeat the words after me’ shit every five minutes and the crowd were left to do whatever they wanted and left it open to interpretation which let some people absorb and others to project, which made the atmosphere a lot more comfortable and a lot more gratifying.

They played the latest album ‘Like Clockwork’ in full (bar ‘Keep Your Eyes Peeled’) which I thought was a smart move as it allowed old fans to see that Queens of the Stone Age is still an unsanded, gritty, seducing band which will never die.

Bella Hutton

Setlist

You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, but I Feel Like a Millionaire

No One Knows

The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret

My God is The Sun

Monsters in the Parasol

I Sat by The Ocean

…Like Clockwork

In the Fade

If I Had A Tail

Kalopsia

Little Sister

Fairweather Friends

Smooth Sailing

Make It With Chu

I Appear Missing

Sick, Sick, Sick

Go With The Flow

Encore

The Vampyre of Time and Memory

Feel Good Hit of The Summer

A Song For The Dead.