Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 91/2 /10
There is something about Josh Homme, his demeanour, the personal swagger or even just the way he stands on stage infront of many thousands of fans, that even when he declares that if the crowd can be patient with him as he is feeling under the weather, it is a gig that is just utterly and simply a wall of ferocious sound. A gig in which a thousand suns exploding simultaneously across the galaxy would barely have audiences raising the eyes upwards and the muted wonderings of what dare disturb a man in full flight.
Even with the enigmatic Queens of the Stone Age frontman apparently not feeling at his best, the resulting show, especially his own performance, at the N.I.A. in Birmingham was nothing short of fantastic. There are many great American rock performers around but Josh Homme encapsulates the definition of cool, the Steve McQueen with a guitar and a sense of the lyrical, to the point of every person inside the arena wanting to either be him or at least having even the smallest measure of his writing and musical ability.
The tour comes on the back of the success of the phenomenal album …Like Clockwork, a piece of recording history that should certainly be in the top 50 albums of the year across all genres. As the bodies down the front of the audience crunched and slammed in time with each beat, the crowd in the seated positions jiggled furiously at each strum of the guitar and seemingly each individual person having a smile as broad as an English cricketer taking 10 wickets in Australia, the Queens of the Stone Age played tracks from …Like Clockwork and their prestigious back catalogue including the superb No One Knows, The Lost Art of Keeping A Secret, the brilliant If I Had A Tail, Little Sister, the brutal honesty of Fairweather Friends, I Sat By The Ocean and the wonderful moodiness of The Vampyre of Time and Memory.
On this showing it is no wonder that the tour has gone done as well as it has, for many in the Birmingham crowd, an audience that has to be said really knows their Rock, it could only be bettered by their own Black Sabbath dropping in unexpectedly to lend a hand.
If Josh Homme was feeling unwell beforehand, then in it goes to show that given the right crowd, the right venue and the blistering energy of Rock, nobody can stay too bad for long, a great night…a tremendous night of great Rock.
Ian D. Hall