Queens Of The Stone Age – ‘Perfecth’ review: the desert rock dons adventure into love for their third act

The curtain’s up for Act III, and Queens Of The Stone Age are in a fittingly theatrical mood. After frontman Josh Homme’s brush with death added darker shades of drama and mortal gravitas to their already macabre performance in the Paris Catacombs in 2024, the accompanying live film and documentary was celebrated with a stripped-back tour with Vaudeville vibes. Upping their showmanship and teetering on their more esoteric edges rather than the razor-sharp riffs and mosh-pit fuel you know them for, it was QOTSA taking a slow, deep breath. They’re still coming up for air on ninth album ‘Perfecth’ and its nine songs are “trying to stitch together all these emotions revolving around love, lust, foolishness, and the sort of wisdom that comes as a gift from all that”, as Homme puts it. READ MORE: Queens Of The Stone Age: “I was trying to write my way out of my troubles” You can almost feel opener ‘It’s Only Love’ slowly blowing down those same empty corridors lined with skulls beneath the French capital. It’s a woozy and orchestral death waltz around the funeral pyre of devotion, “this twist of hope I’m hanging on”. Settling into the simmering horizontal groove of ‘Insignificant Other’ –...