Queens Of The Stone Age Are On Their Way For ‘The End Is Nero’ Summer Australian Tour

Queens of the Stone Age officially announce The End Is Nero Summer 2024 Australian tour, the band’s first appearance in Australasia since 2018. The End is Nero tour is in support of their acclaimed eighth studio album, In Times New Roman… which debuted at #2 on the ARIA charts and which NME Australia described as “their darkest, knottiest material to date.’ The End Is Nero tour is an invitation from Joshua Homme, Troy Van Leeuwen, Michael Shuman, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore to come celebrate the end of the world, which we hear is “in a month or two.”

They would like to encourage the obscene and the clean, the outcasts and the weirdos, and anyone and everyone in between to attend, this is where you belong. Leave your judgement at the door, bring anything and everything else. Michael Shuman talks to Hi Fi Way about the tour and the challenges of making In Times New Roman…

Awesome news that Queens Of The Stone Age are returning to Australia this February. It definitely feels like a long time between drinks?
Sure does, man. I need another one now!

Have you been blown away by the reaction already on social media and probably even more so around the world since you’ve been touring the new album?
Yeah, I try not to spend too much time on social media but what I’m told and the few things I’ve seen it’s all been very positive. Seeing our fans that I haven’t seen in years and speaking to some journalists and stuff like that that we’ve had long relationships with, the reaction’s been wonderful and it feels really, really good. It makes it that much better to get out on the road and go play these songs live.

Does Australia write highly as one of your favourite places to tour?
It really is. I think it’s my favorite tour. I don’t know if I could pick a city that’s my favourite, but as far as a whole tour, it’s the highlight of our cycle for me.

I really love the new album In Times New Roman… When you start reflecting back on that and all the challenges, do you feel incredibly proud now of what you ended up with as a finished album?
I feel like we could finally like breathe and actually enjoy and relish in the work that we put in. It was not easy. Probably the hardest record we made and whether or not, we go in tunnel vision and you don’t even think about the songs and how you’re going to think about them later. I don’t even know how I think about them, like if they’re my favourite songs we’ve ever made or the worst. To get through that and to be out on the road and being able to play music for a living and being in this band together, I think we’re finally really enjoying it. I think more than ever, all five of us as a unit, there’s joy in it, whereas other tours there’s been other issues maybe, but right now it’s just like we’re just really enjoying each other and playing together as a band. So yeah, I feel very fortunate.

When you say that it was the hardest album to make, was that just the studio experience or was that everything else that was going on around you?
Honestly, for some reason our records are extremely hard to make. Everyone is just a fucking nightmare, even though we’re giggling through it and having a good time, it’s a fucking nightmare. We always are like, why is this so hard? I think it’s because we care so much and we want it to be the best record that we’ve ever made, right? We’re not just going through the motions. So there’s that and then when there are personal things going on between any of us, individually, it adds to difficulty. It adds to stress levels, tension, the content that’s being made and what that’s based off of and the feelings that are going into it. So it’s all of the things. It’s not like it’s hard for us to like play, oh, I really can’t get that take because actually this record there’s a lot of one take bass and drums, I speak for myself. There were a lot of times I went in there, kind of figured out the arrangement, played it, and we’re like, cool, that was good, all right, let’s move on. So as far as that kind of ease, I’m not worried about that, but that’s all the other shit.

Do you find that the difficult times and all that sort of stuff in terms of making this album just galvanizes the band even more so that once you come through at the end you’re really united so it makes the whole touring side of things even easier?
Yeah, that’s exactly right. I think you feel like you’ve accomplished something and you’ve gotten through this gauntlet and all the hurdles and even though you’re beat down and sweaty and whatever, it’s like that feeling does make it all worth it. I didn’t think we could get closer. I’ve been with these dudes for almost seventeen years and I feel like they’re my family and my brothers, but I feel like we’re closer now. Josh is like my big bro, and we spent the last thirty five days after not recording for a year, just me and him went in, did the vocals and mixed the record and we didn’t take a day off. We were just together every day. So that bond, it was just even more than we ever had before, which is hard to imagine. It really makes it all worth it, man.

Did you have an idea after Villains what the band wanted to do with the next album that would be In Times New Roman…?
We didn’t have any preconceived ideas. I think lucky for us because I know a lot of bands, a lot of friends bands, made records to come out, and they got the shit end of the stick because of COVID. But, luckily for us, we were in an off cycle and so we knew we were going to go make a record, and it just happened to become the right timing for us. We had some ideas for stuff that maybe had lingered in the past, but there were two songs that we knew that we always wanted to bring back and try again and this is for the third time, which were Time & Place and Straight Jacket Fitting. So those songs we wrote, I guess in 2011 or 2012, we tried to put them on …Like Clockwork and just didn’t work, just didn’t fit right, we couldn’t figure it out, tried it on Villains didn’t fit. So we were tried it again, rewrote some things and finally made the record. Those are some of the ideas that we had going into it, but not what kind of record we wanted to make, no.

What was the vibe and energy really awesome in the studio? Given the challenges, was it frustrating as well?
I wouldn’t use the words really awesome . It’s not because like when we got something and we were in a great place, it was really awesome. There was so much real life, put fantasy land making music aside, real life shit that we all had going on in our lives that it’s hard to not bring it to the studio every day. I mean, you try your best to leave it at home, but there’s stuff going on, it doesn’t go away. A lot of times it was not fun and you can ask anybody, they’ll say the same thing, but doesn’t mean that we don’t try hard and we don’t try to be as creative as possible and we don’t put in the hours, we do all that on top of or in spite of all the shit that we’re dealing with.

Once you had the album finished, were you able to listen to the album start to end and how did you find that experience?
We recorded all the music. It took about maybe nine months, we were supposed to go do vocals, and I actually left town, so Josh was supposed to do some vocals and he didn’t. Cut to a year later, I was coming home from England and the other dudes were out of town, so we went in and finished the record off. When I’m making a record, all I’m doing is trying to make sure it’s the best shit possible and that I love it and that we all love it. So even at the end, we’re mastering and we finally got sequencing, the pacing and the mix is right and all that stuff. I’m still listening with a technical ear, so once that’s done, I’m done. I don’t want to listen to this record ever again. In a lot of ways it’s like, it’s not for me anymore. It’s for the people to hear and I’ve heard these songs thousands of times, , you know what I mean? That’s the kind of work and the kind of ear that I put into it, it’s just like over and over and over and over and over again. So I’m done. I don’t really go back, reflect and think about how good this was and or how we should have done it better. It’s just like, I’m done.

How would you compare In Times New Roman to Villains?
For me, …Like Clockwork, Villains and In Times New Roman all kind of sit in a relatively similar world, just because it’s the same dudes. Villains, we had a producer, we had Mark Ronson, and that was really the only difference. I’m not saying that he didn’t do an incredible job, but you know we’re five individuals who have been making records for a long time and we have strong opinions. So it’s not like whoever the producer is going to come in and totally change everything and make us do something totally different. He’s just there to kind of be a sixth member and kind of like encourage us, and like he said, being a big Queens fan to make the record that as a fan he would want to hear. I always thought that was a great way to come in as a producer with a band like us. That was really the only difference, we recorded in different studios. I do think that on this record you really get a chance to see everyone shine. There’s moments for everybody, and everyone played so great that even in the mix, we would be like, oh fuck, look at Dean’s doing something incredible right there, let’s turn that up. Or, you know, John’s going off, let’s turn that up. I think that’s maybe one thing on this record that we really like focus on because the performances we thought were so good.

Do you think album number nine will follow more quickly when you’re at a point when you’re ready to do it? Or is that just too early to even contemplate?
No, we’ve talked about what we would do next, but I guess the one thing that we definitely talked about, and I hope we’re we can make happen is, can we make a record that we have a really good time and it’s really easy to make ! So I think we’re all just in that boat, so whatever we do and whenever we decide to do anything, that’s goal number one.

Focusing on 2024 will that be predominantly touring?
We’re definitely going to be touring and it’ll be all next year. We might do some stuff, we might get in the studio, but there’s a lot of places to go in this world and as long as people want us to play for them, we’re going to go. I think we’ll be touring for hopefully a lot longer than next year too. So we’ll see.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Queens Of The Stone Age on the following dates, tickets from Live Nation…