Josh Homme doesn’t like compliments. He also doesn’t like shopping, eating while standing up at a party, or pretending genre rules matter once you turn 25. So when I open our conversation with sincere praise for In Times New Roman, the brutal, brilliant new Queens of the Stone Age record, I get what I deserve: “I’d like to take this minute to tell you to go fuck yourself,” he grins.
It’s not actually hostile—more like a handshake in Josh Homme’s native tongue. “You know what it means?” he says. “It means I’m just scared.”
That fear, and the willingness to confront it head-on while grinning like a maniac, courses through In Times New Roman. It’s an album where gallows humor and existential dread slow dance across a sonic minefield. “The brutality of the sonic side of this record and the lyric side—that’s why it’s like that,” Homme says. “Because life is fucking nuts.”
And so is Homme. But like, in a productive way. One minute he’s invoking Gilbert O’Sullivan, Chet Baker, and Britney Spears, the next he’s philosophizing about celluloid time loops and calling genre “for teenagers and people who work at record stores.” He’s long past the age where musical boundaries serve any purpose other than self-imposed limitation.
“I don't have guilty pleasures because I don't feel bad,” he says. “I’m in the pursuit of what I care about—and I think you are too.”
That pursuit leads him through bossa nova, glam, jazz, and even a cheeky Willy Wonka reference on “Obscenery,” the album’s opening track. “You’re the first person to notice one of my favorite lines,” he says when I bring up “I make music for all stereotypes.” He beams. “It makes me happy. It’s so accepting and also insulting at the same time.”
If Homme sounds like he’s trying to score a Werner Herzog documentary about human futility with guitar fuzz and reverb, that’s... not inaccurate. When I mention the lyric “When there’s nothing I can do, I smile” from “Carnavoyeur,” he goes full philosopher. “Are you here to service the proof of nothing?” he asks. “I can give you a temporary answer for ‘Why are we here?’ Because you are. So you better get started.”
This is what talking to Homme is like: you show up for rock & roll war stories, and walk away with a dissertation on present-tense existentialism. “You don’t need to do anything,” he says. “What you need to do is move at the speed of inspiration and pursue what’s worth going after.”
And when it all gets too heavy? That’s when he really starts laughing.
“There’s a great story from Auschwitz,” he says, eyes lighting up. “Two guys are doing the worst job imaginable—moving bodies to the crematorium. Mengele walks in in a long almost floor-length leather coat. And these guys are exhausted. Mengele looks at one of their teeth, and says, ‘You need to take better care of your teeth.’ Then leaves. One guy says, ‘Oh, nice,’ and the other says, ‘Yeah, nice coat.’ And they just start laughing.”
That’s the heart of Homme’s worldview—make fun where there is none, or be destroyed by the weight of everything. “When life is tough, that’s when life is funny,” he says. “And when life is really rough, it’s really fucking funny.”
“I want to be real,” he says. “I’m soundtracking my own life, and life is nuts.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.