Queens Of The Stone Age reminding everyone they've got one of the deepest catalogues in rock — and they're not afraid to actually use it.

QOTSA have kicked off their European run alongside System Of A Down, and from the jump they've made clear this isn't going to be a greatest hits jukebox set. The band dug back into Era Vulgaris — their 2007 record that never quite got its flowers — and pulled out deep cuts that most casual fans probably couldn't hum to you in a pub. That takes bottle. Plenty of bands in their position just play it safe and rake in the applause. Not this lot.

They Came To Play, Not To Coast

There's a version of this tour where QOTSA cruise through "No One Knows", "Go with the Flow", maybe chuck in "Little Sister", and everyone goes home happy enough. That would've been fine. Forgettable, but fine.

Instead, they've shown up with Era Vulgaris material that even dedicated fans will have had to think twice about. That record — dense, spiky, slightly paranoid — isn't the easiest sell in a festival-sized setting. It demands something from the crowd. The fact that one fan summed the set up as "cool mix of the hits and some weird stuff" tells you everything: the band are threading the needle between accessible and genuinely interesting, and largely pulling it off.

We respect that. A lot of legacy rock acts reach a point where they're essentially a tribute band to themselves. QOTSA are refusing that fate.

The Company They're Keeping

Touring with System Of A Down is no small thing either. SOAD's fanbase is enormous, passionate, and not always the most adventurous crowd when it comes to supporting acts. Getting Era Vulgaris deep cuts over on those audiences — many of whom showed up purely for Serj and Daron — is genuinely impressive if they're pulling it off.

It also adds to the sense that this European run has some real ambition behind it. This isn't a cash grab. Both bands are bringing something worth watching, and the pairing makes a kind of sense — two groups who made their names being awkward, angular, and uncompromising in an era that often rewarded the opposite.

There's also been plenty of noise around QOTSA's wider activity lately. The Alive In The Catacombs ensemble that appeared at KEXP showed a band still willing to rethink how their music gets presented live. And the Royal Albert Hall date in London drew strong notices. They're not sleepwalking through this period.

Our Verdict

Bands with QOTSA's catalogue have a simple choice: give people the familiar, or trust that the deeper stuff is worth fighting for. Josh Homme and the band are clearly picking the latter, and European audiences are better off for it.

If you're going to one of these shows expecting a straightforward hits set, adjust your expectations — and be glad you had to. Era Vulgaris deserved more attention the first time around. Seventeen-odd years later, it's getting a second shot in the live arena, and that's the kind of thing we're always going to back.

Get yourself to one of these dates if you can. This one's worth it.