Queens Of The Stone Age At The Forum, Friday October 31st 2014

It must have been very good to be Josh Homme on Friday night, he was a red-collar priest, master of the monster riffs in front of 17,000 people, and blasting his greatest hits. It was hard to be me on Friday, it was such a long day but I did all this to see him and the Queens again after a long day at work, a wake up call at 5 am, an one-hour drive to the Forum through LA Halloween traffic, and a drive back around 2 am after walking half an hour under a pouring rain, because I had the brilliant idea to park in the street to avoid the costly Forum parking. Yeah it never rains in LA but it was a Halloween mini-deluge, but I did all this for QOTSA and it was all worth it… especially, I have no regret, now that I am aware it may take a while until we see them on stage again… ‘See you in 2 years’, said Josh Homme at the end of the show… ‘What Josh? I can’t wait that long!!’

The night started early with so many acts, that this Blackout Haunted House extravaganza turned into a mini festival, with sexy burlesque dances by the Suicide Girls between each act, eventually a costume context, and really not a dull moment during the whole night. Nick Oliveri started the festivities very early (7:30), but it is probable that everyone remembers much more about his second performance of the night – an historic reunion with the Queens – than his early solo set… He nevertheless played a very muscular, aggressive hard rocking set, loaded with heavy metal riffs, raging screams and a lot of anger; he seemed totally mad when he was singing, but so grateful to be there between the songs. I know he had a show at the Satellite a little while ago, and it must be something to go from a 200-people audience to the Forum’s capacity although it was far to be full at this point. The music of the QOTSA ex-bassist was very well received by the fans and whatever happened in 2004 – when he was fired from the band after accusations he had been abusing his girlfriend – was definitively forgotten. The appeal for his furious fusion of metal/hardcore/punk was obvious, he also went into some dissonant territories, explosive riffs with hurling vocals and a song, ‘from the desert’, sounded like a sample from the Kyuss catalogue… Why are guitars so big in the desert? The Suicide girls didn’t let us a moment to breathe and started right away with one of their cabaret-comedy-strip-tease dance over Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’.

In comparison, JD McPherson had such a retro sound that we got transported in the pre-Elvis 50s for a little while, like a Sun Records throwback. He was good though, surrounded by musicians playing an upright bass, a sax and a Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano, he still showed an ex-punk feeling while playing some vintage rockabilly. As his first songs didn’t depart very much from some oldies style, just like with this other oldies-lover Nick Waterhouse, I got the impression the band was doing covers. Being from Oklahoma, he dedicated a song to all country people ‘Ain’t nothing but a country boy’ and did a cover ‘Let the good times roll’, by Eddie Cochran… His last songs brought more sax and then we were back in a country church full of boogie rockabilly.

But it wasn’t the Queens’ turn yet, the line up was at the image of the show … The Kills and their hard-hitting drums were next, and the band had really dressed up for Halloween with glow-in-the-dark patches covering Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince’s head-to-toe black outfits, making them very visible as they were moving in front of black hooded drummers. Although I could not see every detail (I was quite far from the stage) there was a lot of action on stage and a lot of walking. I am not familiar with the Kills and it took me a while to get used to their girl-boy duo playing aggressive harmonies. I was not connecting first, I didn’t find the sound great (not their fault) and my seat was even vibrating from the music,… then they had songs which sounded like a war declaration, with biting guitars, Mosshart’s raging vocals over hard-hitting-floor percussions and explosive developments. They did ‘Heart Is a Beating Drum,’ ‘Pots and Pans” and ‘Monkey 23’ which turned into some solo guitar a la Jack White with Mosshart moving like a nervous animal.

After more Suicide Girls (do they have a number where they don’t end up naked?) a costume contest, and some crappy footage (the sound was horrible) of a 1978 concert of The Cramp — but it is the Cramps’ annual Halloween shows which inspired Homme to put together this big QOTSA show — and I was started to get a bit sleepy.But when the Queens’ tall shadows finally appeared behind the screen, the energy suddenly rose up, everyone stood up and my drowsiness immediately vanished. They gave us an epic finale for their world tour, their most successful tour ever, which started a year and half ago. It was the perfect ending as I saw them at the Wiltern in May 2013 when they launched the tour. I was regretting more than ever not to have been able to score a floor ticket, I was far, far away from the stage whereas I was in the pit at the Wiltern.

Every song they played, either old or new, sounded like a classic and was delivered with muscular guitars and ferocity, after such a long tour, they were beaming and exploding at each monster riff. They started with ‘Keep Your Eyes Peeled’ from their 2013 ‘… Like Clockwork’ album – a perfect start for celebrating the day of the dead as the album was born out of Homme’s near death experience. Jake Shears who looked like a white ghost from my seat, was on vocals, then without taking a breath, it was ‘Feel Good Hit of the Summer’ and a non-stop series of other hits, with the Queens brushing their large catalogue of all these big songs and their escalation of colossal guitar riffs.

The delivery was so fluid and was running like the easiest thing these men have ever done, Josh was balancing with his guitar, swinging so smoothly, managing to use his best falsetto over heavy music, mixing danceable rhythms with testosterone-charged metal action. The stage was taking every shape and colors you could imagine, from red fumes to yellow lights to green lasers, taking some giant disco ball ambiance during ‘Smooth Sailing’, continuing with the heavy dance floor with ‘If I had a Tail’.

It was going fast and there is so much urgency in their music that nothing could have possibly stop the fury QOTSA had started. Homme was feeling good, saying a few ‘What a night, Good times’, but alluding to a future break and already making us to regret the absence…. ‘The last one for a long time’… the show barely slowed down during the personal melancholia of ‘The Vampyre of Time and Memory’… but even then, there was not much stopping and it was more and more ‘good times at LA fucking Forum’, and Josh even proposed to ‘all sing together’ during ‘Make it Wit Chu’. Then it was more of these empowering guitars during ‘Regular John’, ‘No One Knows’, and I thought, may be you can die happy when you have written so many of these ballooning riffs piling at the top of each other… ‘Happy Halloween’, screamed Josh before disappearing.

The six-song encore was the piece of resistance of the show with Nick Oliveri’s performance, his second since he was fired from the band ten years ago. It took me a while to realize that Josh Homme was wearing a priest outfit, (like the rest of the band) and if it suited his badass attitude very well, it was especially relevant when he was side by side with Nick Oliveri and his red horns during the encore… it’s true that, with his signature goatee, Nick didn’t have to make a lot of efforts to transform himself into the devil. The audience felt the greatness of the moment while Nick sang five songs, ‘You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire’ ‘Quick and to the Pointless’, ‘Auto Pilot’, ‘Another Love Song’, ‘Gonna Leave You,’ but left for the last one, the highly Halloween-appropriate ‘A Song for the Dead’ that they played under a thunderstorm of confetti, and you couldn’t have hoped for a more explosive grand final of a show which was itself the final of a grand tour… no one seems to know if Nick Oliveri’s return is permanent but everybody has noted he was singing and was not back behind a bass. A few things are certain, this show has elevated their music, whose heaviness can only be compared to its danceable effect, to a new level, QOTSA has expanded its sound as its fan base and when the band comes back to the scene in a few years, I will be in the pit

Setlist:
Keep Your Eyes Peeled (W/ Jake Shears)
Feel Good Hit of the Summer
The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret
My God Is the Sun
Smooth Sailing
If I Had a Tail
Little Sister
Someone’s in the Wolf
The Vampyre of Time and Memory
I Sat by the Ocean
Make It Wit Chu
Regular John
No One Knows
Go With the Flow

Encore:
You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, but I Feel Like a Millionaire (W/ Nick Oliveri)
Six Shooter (W/ Nick Oliveri, first time since 2004)
Auto Pilot (W/ Nick Oliveri, first time since 2005)
Another Love Song (W/ Nick Oliveri, first time since 2004)
Gonna Leave You (W/ Nick Oliveri, first time since 2004)
A Song for the Dead