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.”
Kyuss first caused a stir when they began hosting nocturnal “generator parties”, whereby Homme and guests would head into a remote corner of Palm Desert, hook up to a generator and jam until the sun came up. Their second album, 1992’s Blues For The Red Sun, recorded when Homme was just 19, became a key text in the stoner-rock bible, marked by his shuddering guitar lines.
Two albums later, they were gone. Homme joined Screaming Trees as a touring guitarist, after which he headed to the Mojave, where he began The Desert Sessions, a series of impromptu jams with various members of Monster Magnet, Soundgarden and Kyuss, tripping on mushrooms for days at a time.
In 1996 he formed Queens Of The Stone Age. A killer debut was followed in 2000 with the blistering Rated R.
Five more QOTSA albums down the line is due in May – alongside releases as Eagles Of Death Metal and an ebullient debut with Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones as Them Crooked Vultures, Homme shows no signs of letting up. A new QOTSA album, In Times New Roman..., is due this year. Word is that it’s going to be special, even by Homme’s standards.
“Music is never wrong,” he once said. “You might not like it, but it’s never wrong. It’s such a great way of explaining stuff.”
