Side by side with the announcement of their long-awaited eighth studio album – In Times New Roman, out Fri 16 June – US rock royalty Queens Of The Stone Age have put their foot in the door for a quick UK tour too. This month’s outdoor show at Cardiff Castle, one of four UK dates, is the band’s first Welsh visit since 2002, and Emma Way’s cue to nominate five QOTSA favourites.

A Song For The Dead

Loosely considered a concept album due to its car radio interludes and long drive connotations, the band’s 2002 breakout and third studio release Songs For The Deaf features Dave Grohl on drums and is the last Queens Of The Stone Age record to feature core bass player Nick Oliveri. The furious screams of Mark Lanegan – previously a guest vocalist alongside frontman Josh Homme, upgraded to full-time member for this album – and searing guitars make A Song For The Dead a soaring success for the American rock outfit as they attempt to reach new bridging-on-metal heights. 

You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire

The anticipation you feel listening to the opening drums, waiting for this track to kick in, is what makes You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar… worthy of its opening status. An intense, side-splitting drum performance by Grohl, roaring vocals and a simple, yet thunderously effective, guitar riff makes the whole thing feel like an explosion. And let’s not forget that drop…

Medication

Lullabies To Paralyze, 2005’s followup to Songs… and a Billboard 200 chart climber, birthed some instant entries into QOTSA’s canon: Little Sister, Burn The Witch, and – with its unforgettable stop-start menacing drums – Medication. With Homme’s overdrive guitar cranked out with maximum energy, the arrangement ably opens up the drum segments of Joey Castillo, a well-travelled rock drummer who replaced Grohl until being ejected from the band in 2013.

3’s & 7’s

Featured on the same album as singles Make It Wit Chu and Sick, Sick, Sick,3’s & 7’s is a defining moment on QOTSA’s fifth studio album, 2007’s Era Vulgaris.It combines jumpy, overdriven guitars – akin to Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit – with a tongue-in-cheek vocal performance from Homme, who alongside bandmates Castillo and Troy Van Leeuwen leave the change of the song’s bridge until the very end, to keep the listener’s ear sharp.

Go With The Flow

Another feature on Songs For The Deaf and one of its three singles,Go With The Flow was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 2004 Grammy Awards. If you listen to the lyrics, they remind you just how far we’ve come with regard to gender roles in song, as self-styled villain of circumstance Josh Homme appears frustrated with a love interest going from relationship to relationship, unable to settle.

Queens Of The Stone Age, Cardiff Castle, Fri 23 June.

Tickets: £59.50/£95 hospitality (both sold out). Info: here

words EMMA WAY