You’d be hard pushed to find a more prolific modern artist than Josh Homme. Since founding doom-rock avatars Kyuss in 1987, the Californian has been the guiding force of stoner kings Queens Of The Stone Age, experimental collective The Desert Sessions, garage-trash outfit Eagles Of Death Metal and a member of supergroup Them Crooked Vultures. Not to mention any number of other projects with such luminaries as Trent Reznor, Foo Fighters, Masters Of Reality, Primal Scream, Mastodon, Iggy Pop and Mondo Generator.
If there’s one defining factor that links all of these restless wanderings, it’s Homme’s curiosity for uncovering new sounds and textures. One minute he’s lashing a punk riff to a greasy funk groove, the next he’s building towering slabs of metal noise, only to shower it with psychedelia and watch it dissolve into an acid fug of alt.rock weirdness. He also knows when to move on. When Homme suddenly called time on Kyuss in 1995, he said: “It’s better to blow it up while it’s going good than watch it start to sink.”
