After a recent swing through Europe, Queens Of The Stone Age returns home to kick off its The End is Nero Tour of North America on Thursday, Aug. 3 at the Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre in suburban Detroit. The two-month trek marks the group's first live shows since 2018 and will be done in three separate legs, including a September 16 performance at Riot Fest in Chicago. Guitarist-keyboardist Dean Fertita tells us that the band leader Josh Homme and the rest of the quintet are coming home with plenty of momentum following the shows in Europe: “It’s been five-year delay between the last show and these, and there's been a lot of peripheral things getting in the way to complicate just the act of playing shows, like Josh had some health issues and things like that, so we really didn't know, and I feel like we've never been better. Like, this run was probably the most fun I've ever had, and maybe some of the shows I've felt were some of the best we've ever done.” :33 (OC: best we've ever done)
The tour is supporting QOTSA's eight studio album, In New Times Roman…, which came out June 16 and debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 album chart. It's also launched the singles “Emotion Sickness,” “Carnavoyeur” and “Paper Machete.” Fertita says North American audiences can expect to hear more of the new songs than QOTSA rolled out in Europe, where it was playing primarily festival dates.
QOTSA has emerged from a trying period in the band's history beyond even the pandemic that delayed progress on the album. During the interim Homme through a protracted and acrimonious dispute with ex-wife Brody Dalle over custody of their three children, of whom he now has full custody, and was diagnosed with cancer during 2022, from which he's recovered.
