Monday morning on the 13th of July 2026, and Queens Of The Stone Age are resting up in the Rosewood Hotel in Holborn ahead of this evening’s sold-out show at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. They’ll soon be warming up a crowd of more than 60,000, before their peers shake the earth in what will be their first of two shows in London, part of their colossal return to European stages after going nearly a decade without playing on the continent.

and are still getting to grips with the mania they’ve been witnessing every night from the side of the stage. “It’s a swirling, gigantic ocean of faces that are moshing and lighting fires,” Troy says with a bewildered grin, sitting across from me at the breakfast table, adorned in a leather jacket and sunglasses in classic rockstar fashion. Jon, who is also abiding by the unspoken sunglasses-indoors-at-11AM rule, shows me a video he took in Düsseldorf last Friday. I now know what they mean.

“I think we did Rock in Rio with them ten or twelve years ago, but nothing could prepare me for what I’ve seen on this tour. Their fans are fucking nuts. It looks like they’re going to start the apocalypse,” he continues. Jon, who previously opened for the band when he was playing with in 2003, echoes the sentiment. “They’re fucking killing it. The shows have been so good.”

While in London, the band and their label Matador are taking the opportunity to kickstart the campaign for the band’s ninth studio album ‘Perfecth’, set for release on October 30th. This marks the first in a string of interviews they’re doing to talk about the project, though at the time of the interview, the album has barely been teased and is still quite far from even being announced.

It’s Jon Theodore’s fourth Queens record behind the drum kit. He was sworn in after being brought in to assist the completion of their 2013 album ‘…Like Clockwork’ at the recommendation of following ’s departure.

“Shit, it’s the fourth? Damn, I never counted ’em,” he says when I put this to him and ask how he reflects on his time as the sixth and longest serving drummer in the band’s thirty-year history.

“It’s been a real odyssey, man. I made the journey from being a fan of the band to being their drummer and counting their songs in every night,” he explains. “It’s an amazing opportunity for me as a player. Being the sixth drummer in the band, there’s a lot of material that I play that I didn’t write, which increases my own skill set. To be able to go back and inhabit those styles and tendencies of the other drummers that came before me is pretty great, because I’m a fan of all the music I’m playing too.”

So when you’re playing tracks that you didn’t record, do you prefer to stay true to the original or add your own sensibilities to them? “At this point, it’s kind of like the best idea wins in every situation. But for me, I’m motivated to honour the past. I was a huge fan of those records anyway, so I’ve always thought the closer I can get to the original, the better.” He expands, “It’s a cool challenge. But also, if an idea moves me, then I’ll throw it in there anyway. It’s pretty funny because if I do throw some shit in there, I usually catch a little side-eye from one of the others.”

Given that the band’s had more drummers than Spinal Tap, did you feel like there was a lot of pressure coming into the role? “When I joined, I had a lot of work to do because the gap between being a fan and actually playing with the band was pretty significant. That felt like a high-pressure situation. Just actually learning all the material and getting myself into a place, both mentally and physically, where I could deliver.” Though he admits that most of the pressure he endures is self-inflicted. “That’s still something I feel today. I wake up every day and I’m like, fuck, I gotta destroy.”

The first track from the new album that the band laid down in the studio was a cover of Iggy Pop’s ‘Sunday’, which features on his 2016 album ‘Post Pop Depression’, a collaborative record made with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and Dean Fertita, and Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders. Troy Van Leeuwen would later join the touring band behind the album, so I asked how he reflects on that period ten years on, and why it felt important for the band to begin work on this new project by returning to that record.

“That tour, for the amount of songs we were able to play, was probably one of the most fun and unforgettable things I’ve ever done. When you’re playing your own music and doing your own records, there’s always a chance that people might not like the next thing you do, and that’s fine. But when it came to that tour, we were mainly playing songs off ‘The Idiot’, ‘Lust for Life’ and ‘Post Pop Depression’, and I know those songs like the back of my hand,” he explains.

“You’re up there every night watching Iggy and playing the best music ever. It makes me smile to even think about it. ’Cause the pressure’s off; he’s the one that everyone’s watching, and we’re stood behind him just having a blast. He’d just turned 70, and I remember being like, man, I want to be like that when I’m his age.”

Queens have never shied away from playing around with covers, and with each album they try to include a track from ‘The Desert Sessions’, the musical collective established by Homme in 1997, which over the years has featured collaborations with the likes of PJ Harvey, Mark Lanegan, Soundgarden’s Ben Shepherd and many more. “‘I Wanna Make It Wit Chu’, ‘In My Head’, ‘Hanging Tree’ are all Desert Sessions songs,” Troy tells me.

The choice of ‘Sunday’ was partly about shaking off the cobwebs and finding their feet together in the studio again. “We needed a song that would kick us into gear and get rid of the dust and rust after not recording together for some time. The real challenge came when Josh was doing the vocals, because there’s no point in even trying to replicate Iggy.” He adds, “After a bit of uncertainty over how we were going to do it, we got it to a place where it has this sort of ’70s French funk feel to it.”

Before they began work on ‘Perfecth’ — a title in keeping with Josh Homme’s love of wordplay — Homme’s health had reached a critical point, forcing the band to cancel the remaining dates of their European tour so the singer could fly home to receive life-saving surgery. But while in Europe, the band had also been scheduled to play an intimate show in the Paris Catacombs, something they had been trying to make happen for years, only to become caught in a lengthy bureaucratic back-and-forth with the French authorities. At a point in his life when survival felt more uncertain than ever, Homme decided to go ahead with it. In typical Queens fashion, they brought in a group of string players, squeezed in a couple of rehearsals in a hotel room and, once underground, recorded two takes of every song.

“We already had the catacombs booked in, and Josh said, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna do it.’ So there was that air of intensity there, because he was maybe gonna die, and he was literally a mile underground in a damp mausoleum surrounded by reminders of death,” Jon explains. “It’s essentially a crypt underground. Water is dripping off skulls and shit, you know? There’s no place like it. We love that place. It’s a tremendous inspiration.”

He continues, homing in on the band’s collective desire to create music in bizarre and unconventional locations. “We’re so inspired by our surroundings and are constantly looking for ways to reinvent our music. That was an example of how the scenario created this reverence in us that enabled us to get into a creative space we’ve never been in before. When I listen back to that, I can smell the damp and dust in the air, you know?”

This is something they brought with them in the pursuit of ‘Perfecth’, which they began recording in New Orleans on the eve of Mardi Gras. In its own way, the setting carried some of the same preoccupations with death, ritual and spectacle as the Catacombs, only here they were unfolding against the backdrop of a city in the throes of a massive party, something the band have never exactly been shy about embracing.

“Going to New Orleans during Mardi Gras was definitely a conscious decision. We were like, let’s try something new. Some great things came out of that. We can get bored easily, and recently we’ve found ourselves craving these experiences more and more. I’d like to play in this fire pit in the desert in Turkmenistan that they call the Mouth of Hell,” Troy explains.

Jon picks up the tale: “New Orleans became the sixth member of the band. We went from the pits of despair to the apex of partying. We’re all very sensitive, dynamic players and people. The reason we love doing things like the catacombs, or going to New Orleans, is because we thrive on the energy around us; hence, we also love playing shows.”

The last several records were recorded at the band’s studio in California, which no longer exists.

“It was very work-like,” Jon says, describing how this album was treated less like a nine-to-five and more like the routine of a fighter entering training camp. “Prior to this album, we’d talked about the way it’s always been and the way it was for us coming up, where there are zero external factors affecting what you’re in the mindset of doing. It’s the same when you go on tour, and you’re quite isolated as a band and away from your family, and the only responsibility you’ve really got is to make great music with people you love.”

Throughout their time in the Big Easy, the band were pitched up in Rick Nelson’s Marigny Studios, where they laid down tracks like ‘Sunday’ and ‘Illiterate’. “The route for most of the parades went around the studio, so we could hear it through the walls, and we’d run outside and dance to the bands and stuff. There’s a friendly bar across the street, so if we were in some sort of rut, we’d run across the road and grab a drink, high-five our friends in the neighbourhood and get back to it. It was a really inspiring time, and that energy rolled itself right into the tunes we did there, the sort of more rocking tunes,” Jon recalls.

The chaos they embraced in New Orleans set the tone for much of what the new album would come to celebrate. Its title plays on the pursuit of a utopian but ultimately non-existent state of perfection, while the record itself is unusually candid about heartbreak and vulnerability in the wake of Homme’s health scare and widely publicised divorce.

‘Insignificant Other’ is perhaps the track that most vividly embodies this feeling, tracing the shell-shocked aftermath of watching “forever” become “for never”. Its swaggering riffs conjure a distinctly bachelor-esque energy: leather jackets, motorcycles and a tall glass of Southern Comfort and orange — bravado worn over bruises.

Detailing the momentary chaos that gave rise to the album take, Jon reveals: “The take you hear on the record is one we recorded at 2 a.m. after a whole day of beating our heads against the wall and trying to crack another song. We didn’t get it at the end of the day, so we were kind of worn out and frustrated, and we were about to leave, and it was late, and we’d been drinking, and we suddenly just started kicking these ideas around.”

He expands, “We tried it a couple of times, but it was only like two takes, and we were calling the arrangements out while we were playing. And in that tune, everyone is just listening to each other and improvising, doing what they wanna do. We went to a different studio and tried to beat it because we were thinking, ‘Oh, maybe the tones could have been better,’ and afterwards we found that while we had technically better sounds, we couldn’t recapture the same moment that brought the first recording together. We couldn’t beat it. Ironically, I think it’s the most significant song on the record for that reason. It’s .”

That appetite for the unfamiliar doesn’t end with Queens’ own music. Even after decades spent digging through the stranger corners of rock, Troy is still finding bands capable of catching him completely off guard. “There’s a band we’re gonna tour with in Australia called Tropical Fuck Storm. They’ve got like 10 records out or something crazy like that. I can’t believe I’d never heard of them before.”

Another recent favourite has been the mighty , with whom Queens have developed something of a mutual admiration. “I love Viagra Boys. We just saw Seb in Sweden. We toured with them in the States, and it was wild. We’re quite fond of each other as bands. We get along like a house on fire.”

But talk of the bands exciting him now inevitably raises the question of how the next generation are supposed to find their feet in an industry where cutting your teeth at grassroots level has become increasingly difficult. For Troy, there’s still no substitute for getting out there and learning through failure. “If I didn’t get out of my bedroom and jump in a van with a bunch of my friends, I’d never have learned how to fuck things up now on much bigger stages. It’s important to do it when you’re young and you’re stupid.”

He continues, shedding light on the crisis facing grassroots music venues, as highlighted in reports by organisations such as the . “There was a dingy place called Jabberjaw in LA in the ’90s, and a lot of us played there growing up. You’d get paid 150 dollars for a show if you were lucky. It’s the same when you start touring on that level, and you find those spots all over the world, and you find out as the years go by that they’re all shutting down. It’s heartbreaking, and it’s not just happening on the club level; it’s also happening to independent festivals. They’re going by the wayside because of big corporate money sweeping in and monopolising the whole thing.”

He concludes with a message of hope, and a passionate belief in the next generation’s ability to find a way forward. “I do believe that art finds a way, and I have to believe that, because the alternative is that we’re doomed. Hopefully, out of all these iconic places closing, the kids that are coming up are still gonna find a way.”

‘Perfecth’ is out on now via Matador Records.