The rumour mill is up and running again today, this time in regards to a potential new album and tour from Queens of the Stone Age. The speculation follows an interview in Rolling Stone, featuring experimental rock supergroup Gone Is Gone.
The band is fronted by Mastadon bassist and Vocalist Troy Sanders, but also includes At the Drive-In drummer Tony Hajjar, multi-instrumentalist Mike Zarin, and QOTSA guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen. The interview in Rolling Stone was predominantly about Gone Is Gone’s background and first LP, but also caught the eye due to something mentioned by Sanders, alluding to each member returning to their parent project for new music in 2017. “I like to think none of us needs [Gone Is Gone], but we all really want this band,” said Sanders. “When that’s the mentality, this is special to the four of us. Otherwise, we wouldn’t dedicate the first week of 2017 to working on this band […] For example, Queens of the Stone Age, Mastodon and At the Drive-In have all been recording, and we all have new records coming out this year.”
New music for Mastadon and ATDI is not necessarily new information, with the latter having dropped ‘Governed by Contaigons’, their first single in 16 years towards the end of 2016, as well as signing up for a multitude of festival dates over the coming months. However, new music for a band the size of QOTSA, following the momentum of 2013’s outstanding …Like Clockwork, naturally pricked the ears of many fans. Sanders confirmed this by saying “We’ve all been extremely busy writing and recording, and we’re about to get super busy touring the world. So I believe we’re all fulfilled to a certain degree with all we have going on.”
Whilst his fellow guitarist has been enjoying his time in Gone Is Gone, QOTSA frontman Josh Homme has been exceptionally busy over the last year or so, having collaborated with Lady Gaga on her latest project Joanne, as well as with the iconic Iggy Pop on Post Pop Depression.
In July 2016, Homme did take time out of his busy schedule to confirm that he and the rest of the Queens were “locked in” to be recording a new album, with Van Leeuwen even going as far as to discuss the LP’s potential sound, telling NME “We’ve already started talking about what we’re gonna do next for the next Queens record, there’s tons of ideas that are bouncing around […] We’re going to do something before the end of the year, as far as recording goes. We’re excited to get back together to follow-up …Like Clockwork, which was a really, really big record for us, personally… It was a big record for us because it was the hardest record to make. And we’re trying to not do that again. We just want to keep things simpler and try that, I guess.”
