In Alive in Paris and Before, the behind-the-scenes documentary that accompanies Queens of the Stone Age’s new concert film Alive in the Catacombs, Josh Homme says, “This place, it’s like trying to run on a sheet of ice. You have no idea how much time has passed there up above. And no time has passed. It’s the same time, all the time, every time.”
He speaks, of course, of the Catacombs of Paris: the underground ossuaries beneath the city of lights that hold the remains of more than six million people. But the quote could easily be applied — perhaps less existentially, less poetically — to the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, where the band played for a 7,000-cap room Friday night (June 13th) with The Kills in tow.
Casinos are specifically designed to elicit that sheet-of-ice sensation: no windows, no clocks. It’s the same time, all the time, every time. Seeing QOTSA in such a distinctive setting (sensory overload from the second you step through the glass doors) the day the Catacombs live album released kind of felt like the band, or perhaps simply the universe, saying, “What are the two most completely fucking opposite places a rock group could play on planet earth?”
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It was the third in a brief string of US dates that serve as replacements for the scrapped remainder of last year’s The End is Nero World Tour, which began in August but resulted in forced cancellations due to Homme’s need for essential medical care for an unspecified health issue. The Catacombs performance was the last time, July 8, 2024, the band played live, until a few days ago when they kicked off this short tour in Boston.
In New Jersey on Friday, after the duo The Kills opened the night with an 11-song set and the cherry bomb energy Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince have been known for over the last 25 years, QOTSA took the stage. The five members sauntered through the darkness to “The Kitchen/The Orgy” from the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack before launching their set with 2002’s “A Song for the Deaf.”
Homme looks in good health (he battled a cancer diagnosis in 2022) and better spirits (he’s got a well-documented, quite checkered performance past). “We’re so happy to be here with you this Saturday night,” he said (it was Friday). “It feels so good to get away from our lives and give you a night you’ll never remember.” For those able to keep their consumption in check, they’ll remember a 20-song setlist spanning records from the Palm Desert-formed band’s nearly 30-year tenure (including “Turnin’ on the Screw,” which they didn’t play in Boston) and, lots of laughs.
“What I love about this town is you’re just a bunch of freaks. It didn’t go well somewhere else, so now you’re here, doing the freak thing,” Homme said. Whether or not the crowd was filled with those full-time freaks, doing the freak thing, or vacationers, is a question left unanswered. I met a British woman in her 50s who uses her work travel to follow the band country-to-country, and also overheard a pair of 20-something dudes at the box office in a push-pull trying to decide whether or not to get tickets. “These guys are like, legitimate,” one said. “Yeah but I don’t know them. I would buy it if it was like, Zac Brown Band.” They waltzed toward the slot machines located a mere 15 feet from the venue’s entry, sans tickets.
And Zac Brown Band QOTSA are not. In a recent interview with Marc Maron, Homme likened marketing an album as the “P.T. Barnum side” of the business. He’ll lure you in with the escapism music provides from the trappings of everyday life, teasers and posts being the worm on the hook, but then, he said, “Let’s enter this world, which isn’t the real world, but once we’re in there, we’re gonna do some shit. We’re gonna get down and dirty.”
The Catacombs of Paris aren’t the real world. They’re filled with bones, 65 feet underground, and have such claustrophobic ceilings that visitors have to duck in some areas. And in a completely different way — the beckoning glow of the slot machines (more than 2,000 of them), a cover band seemingly at every turn (in the lounge bar opposite the venue, at the café), and essentially a mall (you can buy a Gucci purse, or perhaps a pair of Italian leather loafers) — neither is the Hard Rock.
But then again, it’s all the real world, isn’t it? Here on earth, we’re all just freaks, doing the freak thing, trying not to slip on the sheet of ice that is the human experience. Homme and QOTSA know that, and Atlantic City provided the perfect playground to “do some shit, to get down and dirty.”
Queens of the Stone Age’s US tour runs through a June 21st concert in Chicago. Se photos, video, and the setlist from the Atlantic City show below.
Setlist:
A Song for the Deaf
No One Knows
3’s & 7’s
Negative Space
Smooth Sailing
Paper Machete
If I Had a Tail
Time & Place
Misfit Love
I Sat by the Ocean
Carnavoyeur
The Way You Used to Do
Emotion Sickness
My God Is the Sun
Long Slow Goodbye
Turnin’ on the Screw
Make It Wit Chu
Little Sister
Go With the Flow
A Song for the Dead
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