Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age on stage in October 2025
Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age on stage in October 2025
Queens of the Stone Age release Perfecth on Friday 30 October, their ninth studio album and their first since In Times New Roman… in 2023. Josh Homme and bassist Michael Shuman produced it, tracking the songs in New Orleans and Los Angeles, and it comes out on Matador Records.
Homme has described the record in one line that tells you most of what to expect. “Every song sounds like it’s from a different world,” he said. “And that’s on purpose, because it’s trying to stitch together all these emotions revolving around love, lust, foolishness, and the sort of wisdom that comes as a gift from all that.”
A Title That Sounds Like a Typo on Purpose
The misspelling is deliberate, and Homme’s explanation is half joke and half confession. “Nothing in this world is perfect, but everything seems to be ‘perfecth’,” he said. “And that title is funny when you’re in a group, but it ain’t so funny when you’re alone.”
That line frames the whole album better than any press summary could. It is about the gap between how things look from inside a crowd and how they feel at home afterwards, the same distance Homme keeps returning to when he talks about these songs. A band that has spent three decades making swaggering desert rock is, on this evidence, writing about what happens when the swagger wears off.
Homme has gone further on why the word had to be broken. According to Northern Transmissions, he said perfect “has never been honest” and that “it doesn’t exist”, which makes the misspelt version the more truthful one. It fits a band with a long habit of wordplay in its album titles, and “perfecth” compresses that habit into a single word.
Two Songs Already Out
Fans have heard two songs so far. “Easy Street”, which features the country singer Nikki Lane, came first and was debuted live during the band’s Catacombs tour before it was released, according to Matador. It sits seventh on the album.
“Insignificant Other” arrived with the album announcement on 25 August and sits second on the tracklist. “It’s a song about distance,” Homme said. “About how someone can be your entire world only to simply vanish. And about the strange vertigo of being on the receiving end of that.”
The video, directed by Chapman Baehler, takes that heavy subject somewhere lighter. Its cast, per Matador, includes Big Chongus and the band’s own dogs: Ruby Homme, Max Homme, Pumpkin Van Leeuwen, Isabella Puppolini Van Leeuwen and Reesa Shuman. It is the kind of joke that only works because the song underneath it is so serious, and it is very much in character for a band that has never treated its own image too solemnly.
How the Perfecth Rollout Has Unfolded
The campaign has moved in stages since the summer. “Easy Street” arrived in July as the band’s first new music since In Times New Roman…, Consequence reported, after fans had already heard it live on the Catacombs tour. The full announcement followed on 25 August with “Insignificant Other”, its video and a lyric video, plus a short promotional clip of the band and their pets.
Even the teasers played games. A clip featuring Homme and keyboardist Dean Fertita mentioned a 30 September date that turned out to be a false lead, Consequence noted, before the real release date of 30 October was confirmed. For a record built on the idea that nothing is quite what it claims to be, a misleading teaser was on brand.
The live schedule has run alongside the release. In September the band joined the second leg of Foo Fighters’ North American stadium tour, starting at Mosaic Stadium in Regina on 15 September and taking in Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium, Vancouver’s BC Place and Las Vegas’s Allegiant Stadium, with the Vancouver date sold out, according to Matador.
The Full Perfecth Tracklist
The album runs to a tight nine songs:
- It’s Only Love
- Insignificant Other
- Where The Goth Girls At?
- Mono
- From the Cliff
- Sunday
- Easy Street
- Phantom Limb
- Run Away From The Mob
The sequence opens on “It’s Only Love” and closes on “Run Away From The Mob”, which reads like an argument in two titles: love dismissed as a small thing, then a flight from the crowd. With Homme describing every track as coming from “a different world”, expect the album to move between moods rather than settle into one groove.
A Band Producing Itself
Homme and Shuman are credited as producers, keeping the record inside the group. The current line-up is Homme, Troy Van Leeuwen, Michael Shuman, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore.
In the UK, the band clinched their first Number 1 album in 2017 with Villains, the Official Charts Company notes. Their recent activity has been varied too: Matador points to collaborations with Shania Twain on “Faded Blue Jeans” and with Mastodon on “Snakes for Dinner”, and Clash recalls an unplugged set at London’s Royal Albert Hall and a support slot for System of a Down at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
The guest spots say something about range. Singing on a Shania Twain song and a Mastodon song in the same period puts Homme between country-pop and heavy metal, which is roughly the width of the “different worlds” he says Perfecth moves between. Nikki Lane’s appearance on “Easy Street” brings a country voice inside the band’s own record.
The decision to split sessions between New Orleans and Los Angeles hints at the same idea. Two cities with very different musical histories, and a band producing itself in both, is a recipe for a record that does not settle into one sound, which is exactly what Homme has promised. Where a record is made shapes how it sounds, as we found with the Outer Hebrides studio behind Teenage Fanclub’s Do Not Dare To Dream.
Formats, Deluxe Edition and a Complaint Hotline
Perfecth is available on CD and standard black vinyl everywhere, on clear vinyl through independent retailers, and as a limited deluxe gatefold LP sold only through the band’s and Matador’s webstores. The deluxe edition comes with handwritten lyrics, stationery and stamps in a custom envelope, and a bespoke art piece.
In true Queens fashion, the release page also lists a “complaint hotline” number. It is the sort of detail that turns an album rollout into a running joke with the audience, and it suits a record whose title is itself a deliberate mistake.
Where to See Queens of the Stone Age Next
The band spent September in stadiums supporting Foo Fighters across North America, with festival sets at Bourbon & Beyond in Louisville and Aftershock in Sacramento, and played Reykjavík on 24 October. The Perfecth headline dates start in Asia, in the Zepp venues of Japan: Zepp Haneda in Tokyo on 25 November, Zepp Nagoya on 26 November and Zepp Namba in Osaka on 28 November, then Singapore’s Star Theatre on 2 December.
Australia follows with The Drive in Adelaide on 8 December, Hobart on 11 December, Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena on 13 December, Sydney on 15 December, the Newcastle Entertainment Centre on 16 December and the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on 18 December, before the run closes at Auckland’s Spark Arena on 20 December. Headline shows for 2027 are still to be announced, the Official Charts Company reports, and there are no UK or European dates on the current list.
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