Queens of the Stone Age hinted that they have “a secret weapon” up their sleeves, but will first be taking “a little break.”
The Josh Homme-led rock band headlined Download Festival last Friday (14 June 2024) and, with the release of their 2023 LP In Times New Roman… set to be followed by a vinyl reissue of their 1998 debut album with bonus tracks, guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen and drummer John Theodore spoke about the future of the “No One Knows” group.
Speaking to NME about his plans after Download and the rest of the year's shows, the former said: “I'm going to bed! I'm going to take a bit of a break. I know I have some plans for next year but we're just vaguely discussing them.”
Without clarifying whether it was release- or performance-related, the drummer said, “There's definitely an ace up our sleeve, so to speak…”
Tory later hinted, “We can always get back to music, but we're in the middle of a really long summer tour right now and we want to make sure we're still excited about that, even after the tour is over. So all our energy has been taken up with writing new music and talking about making an animated film about the behind the scenes of the making of a documentary.”
John added, “We've been running in about fifth or sixth gear. At some point you need to go into neutral and take a breather. You need to see your family, you need to rest your body, you need to spend time away from each other, because at this point we're like a giant organism with five heads. We're like objects. So we need to free up some of the surface to regenerate, so we can regroup, we can come back and do more.”
QOTSA's current tour is scheduled to conclude on October 6th when they perform at the Memph Music Festival in Memphis, Tennessee.