Queens of the Stone Age on Perfecth, UK tour plans and their favorite London gigs

Want to feel old? Queens of the Stone Age formed 30 years ago.

Unlike so many of their 90s and 2000s contemporaries, Queens of the Stone Age never stopped making new music, though. Their new album, Perfecth, is out today.

It’s a groovy, atmospheric and layered listen. But before you get sucked in and let Insignificant Other earworm its way into your long-term memory, let’s check in with the actual band.

We talked to guitarist Michael Shuman and drummer Jon Theodore about the album and their war stories of playing UK shows. Here’s what they had to say.

On the new album: Perfecth

Jon Theodore: It’s a new sound for us. I mean, we have always had our own studio, and that phase, that era, is behind us now. This is the first record we made elsewhere. We recorded this record in three different studios. One was in Josh's garage. One was Marigny Studios in New Orleans, and one was Sound City.

There are three distinct sounds on the record. Being in different studios changes the nature of the sound, different machines, different rooms, and most importantly, the environment changes. Like being in the city of New Orleans to record right when Mardi Gras was starting to kick off was a really powerful experience. The city was alive and buzzing with passion and pleasure, and we were walking through that on the way into the studio.

I was soaking it all in. So when I listen to a song from New Orleans, it feels like it's got the power of the ghosts of Haiti and Mardi Gras in it. Then for Sound City there's obviously the reverence for the millions of legendary records that came out of that room, it's really amazing to have the opportunity to play and record in that room. The instruments sounds so good in there.

And the garage songs at Josh's have a kind of lo-fi, really sort of prototypical sound to them. It's definitely a different sounding record from a new place.

You know, we feel like we can do anything. We want to be able to play any type of music at any time, and this is kind of beginning the third act of this band. We don't have to play heavy forever. We like doing it, and we will, but it's nice to not be restricted, constrained, to this one thing.

We talked to Jon and Michael earlier this year in July ahead of their epic concerts playing with System of a Down at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. So, naturally, the question of the band’s previous most memorable gigs in London came up, taking us all the way back to the 3rd May, 2007 and a night at the 100 Club — a brilliant little venue found right on Oxford Street.

On Playing London’s 100 Club

Michael Shuman: The first Queens gig I ever played was at the 100 Club. We did a promo tour, and so we did London, Paris, and Berlin. And the first gig was at the 100 Club. It's Soho. It's like old school, been there forever. It’s underground, and probably like fits 300 or 400 people, right? Something like that. Tiny.

I remember like being jet lagged as fuck, and like being relatively nervous, we had to walk through the crowd in the dark to get to the stage, and there's this pole. It's notorious.

I went there back there recently, played there, and there's this pole right in front, right at the stage where I was. It was my first gig [with QOTSA], just feeling nervous and trying to do a great job, and there's a fucking pole like right here where my broken mic was. And that was that was that was probably my greatest moment, and I think my first time playing in London ever.

One of the major pointers to how incredibly popular Queens of the Stone Age are, and have, been in the UK was a gig on 30th June 2018. The band headlined a Queens of the Stone Age and friends concert-slash-day-festival, alongside Iggy Pop, Run the Jewels, The Hives and others.

On QOTSA's biggest London show to date

JT: We did probably our biggest gig ever at Finsbury Park. That was the first time I think we realised — that was a seminal gig for us too — we do have a very large fan base someday here [in the UK]. And then even playing the first gig at Tottenham, of these shows, of the System [of a Down] shows, that I think had the best audience for us, and it felt like, oh, we're home.

Everyone was a singing home from the front to the back, and I think that became pretty apparent. That yeah, maybe there there is something special to the UK for us.

At the other end of the scale, in 2025 Queens of the Stone Age embarked on a Cataombs tour, inspired by the band’s EP Alive in the Cataombs. It was recorded in the cataombs under Paris, and saw the band follow up with a tour of historic venues across the US and Europe, including London’s Royal Albert Hall on 25th October 2025.

On playing the Royal Albert Hall

JT: That was legendary. I mean, that was the best thing about the Catacombs tour was we got to play all these legendary rooms that were built at that time for music and art.

It was a nice kind of homecoming for us, coming from big sports arenas to beautiful rooms that sound great. That I have tons of live recordings from you know, like my favorite live albums, and favourite Led Zepellin shows.

I want to tell you a story. Maybe you don’t have to print it. But I was in the back, and I went to piss, and I was like, I wonder if Bonzo pissed in this toilet? You know, he probably did.

The feeling was there's a lot of legendary places that we got to play. They were unlocked for us, where we'd normally be too loud or too rowdy or whatever.

UK tours: Will QOTSA return to the UK?

JT: Yeah, of course. We're always going to come here. We're always going to play here. Like we said before, it's like feels like a homecoming. We love playing the UK.

The release of Perfecth is a reminder of how much more vital a band Queens of the Stone Age are. We’re in an era of millennial childhood groups embarking on anniversary tours. And while for some folks the band’s iconic 2002 album Songs for the Deaf will never be topped, you can’t argue the band itself has long since moved on from those days creatively.

But, yes, you will typically hear bangers from that album if you go to see them live in 2027.

On Nostalgia tours

JT: We could go back and like play Songs for the Deaf for the rest of our lives. But Josh and Troy are the only two people who actually played on that record and were in the band at that time. I think we'd all rather do something else than just come back and play our old songs all the time, because we don't get what we set out to do from it. Like what's the purpose?

I'd rather like stay home with my kids than be beating my head against the wall — that record's 25 years old or something like that. We're twice that age now.

L.A. is filled with these cats dyeing their hair black and fucking squeezing their their flabby old butt cheeks into their old leather pants and trying to go to the Rainbow and act like they're not in their fucking 60s. You know, for every Lemmy there's a fucking million posers who are just like trying to stay rock. That sounds like fucking hell on earth to me.

Queens of the Stone Age have announced the US and Australia legs of their upcoming 2027 tour, but we're still waiting to hear when we'll be able to hear them play in London next.