Queens of the Stone Age at Rock en Seine: rock ‘n’ roll royalty bring mosh pits to the Parisian suburbs

Domaine National de Saint-Cloud, 24 August 2025

Not many bands can lay claim to being a personal favourite of rock icon Dave Grohl, let alone being called the “best rock band in the world” by him for their live performances. But Queens of the Stone Age have managed exactly that – high praise indeed for a band which has been on the scene for almost 30 years. It was with formidably high expectations, then, that I awaited their headlining set.

Queens’ The End is Nero tour hasn’t come without complications; frontman Josh Homme’s cancer diagnosis in 2022 left him bed-bound for seven months, prompting the cancellation of European tour dates last year. Defying the odds, the band has made a long-awaited return to Paris, a city which is close to Homme’s heart, as he explained before the show: “This festival is one of the good ones for me… I have a strange and beautiful relationship with Paris and France in general.”

This “beautiful” relationship was at play in the Queens’ latest EP, Alive in the Catacombs – a unique acoustic project which Homme has been wanting to play for nearly 20 years. Catacombs has shown the band remains open to pursuing entirely new musical directions. Homme told The Boar that he would want to “step past” standard acoustic covers in the future, prioritising “rewritten or reimagined” tracks. He added: “I don’t need to imagine that we’ve exhausted all the bizarre corners of rock and roll in all these years. And the only thing I really want to do is not the same thing.”

With that in mind, the band succeeded in their desire to ‘not do the same thing’ from the get-go, following a different setlist at each show so that each audience could be sure they were receiving a unique performance.

The band’s performance left little room for criticism, with every downstroke on the dot and every note pitch-perfect

The show kicked off with the blindingly fast riff of ‘You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, but I Feel Like a Millionaire’. Even without the aggressive vocals of erstwhile bassist Nick Oliveri, the song was the sonic equivalent of a sucker punch to the stomach. This was followed by ‘No One Knows’, which was surprisingly only the second song of the set, but which kept festivalgoers unfamiliar with the band’s back-catalogue hooked. At this point, ‘No One Knows’ is a stoner rock anthem, and the crowd sang along without missing a beat.

‘My God Is the Sun’ followed, taking on a brutal majesty thanks to rays of golden lighting sweeping across the stage and the distinctly sacerdotal silhouette of Homme, with his arms raised to the heavens during the choruses. It was over the top, but that’s exactly what Queens do best. ‘Negative Space’, already a favourite of mine for its groovy interplay of guitar riff and bassline, sounded outrageously good live thanks to the prominence of Mikey Shuman’s bass in the mix.

The band’s performance left little room for criticism, with every downstroke on the dot and every note pitch-perfect. I was anticipating an impeccably tight rhythm section and was left satisfied. As the bedrock of the band’s music in the studio and on the stage, Shuman and Jon Theodore maintained a ferocious pace on bass and drums respectively. Troy Van Leeuwen’s guitar work was also on point, particularly during the lap steel solo of ‘Burn the Witch’, while Homme juggled falsetto and technically challenging riffs with ease. Queens’ current lineup is, in short, excellent.

Despite the undeniable strength of …Like Clockwork as an album, there was an abundance, if not overabundance, of its tracks, leaving Queens’ 1998 debut and under-appreciated 2017 release Villains entirely unrepresented

Much like the group’s relentlessly ear-splitting albums, the pace of the set rarely slowed, pausing only with the mild interlude of ‘The Vampyre of Time and Memory’ to catch a breather – although with Queens ‘mild’ is only really a relative term. A gentle piano refrain ushered in laid back crooning from Homme and tastefully distorted guitar licks. Momentum was never quite lost, but it did occur to me that if there was one problem with the show, it was ultimately the setlist.

Despite the undeniable strength of …Like Clockwork as an album, there was an abundance, if not overabundance, of its tracks, leaving Queens’ 1998 debut and under-appreciated 2017 release Villains entirely unrepresented. The inclusion of both ‘If I Had a Tail’ and ‘The Vampyre of Time and Memory’ as slower-paced breathers (again, ‘slower-paced’ being relative) felt somewhat redundant. With its muddy guitar and rapid-fire vocals, ‘Sick, Sick, Sick’ was an inoffensive choice, but if you’re after a crowd-pleaser from Era Vulgaris, then the grunge-style riff of ‘3’s & 7’s’ is surely better suited to live performance.

That being said, it’s refreshing to see a band as large as Queens varying their setlist so dramatically from show to show, and occasionally having a setlist which leaves a little to be desired is a largely unavoidable compromise. Thankfully, songs from In Times New Roman… were given rightful prominence and frequently proved to be stand-out performances, with their intoxicating combination of heavy guitar riffs and catchy vocal melodies.

My notes from the show, hastily scribbled while nearly being sucked into a mosh pit, say it all, really: “best outro ever?” The answer to that, of course, is yes

For the penultimate song of the night, Homme launched into a mellower performance of ‘Make It Wit Chu’, dedicated to the staff at the Paris catacombs. Ever the showman, he orchestrated the crowd – and even an unsuspecting cameraman – in an unforgettable rendition, accompanied by his own falsetto and concluded with an off-kilter, bluesy solo in his signature style.

The closing minutes of the set confirmed what every Queens fan will agree with: that when it comes to closing songs of a set, ‘A Song for the Dead’ is pretty much unbeatable. My notes from the show, hastily scribbled while nearly being sucked into a mosh pit, say it all, really: “best outro ever?” The answer to that, of course, is yes. 12 minutes wasn’t long enough, and you could tell the crowd wasn’t appeased either, clamouring for more even when the band had left the stage.

Since Queens last played at Rock en Seine in 2014, their style has dramatically transformed while remaining true to the band’s stoner rock roots; the head-turning riffs of Sabbath and Black Flag remain, seamlessly blended with touches of glam, garage, and art rock. If Homme’s undimmed passion is anything to go by, another exhilarating decade of reinvention awaits.

★★★★