According to a new Times article, Josh Homme was not happy with a Queens of the Stone Age employee making a political post on the band’s Instagram page earlier this year.
There was an employee who posted something about President Donald Trump on Queens of the Stone Age’s Instagram feed, “using words that they’d heard me use in the office,” Homme says. “Um. They don’t work for us any more.”
Villains, Queens’ dark, heavy, raucously enjoyable new album, is definitely not about Trump, he says. “That’s not my style.” Instead, he sees the album, produced by Mark Ronson, as dance music. It’s still recognisably Queens of the Stone Age, with razor-blade guitars and Homme’s last-man-on-earth vocals, but it does have an extra propulsive energy, and frisky handclaps for good measure. “This is a quest to be more vulnerable,” Homme says. “Dancing is to feel a fool.”
Definitely no politics, though, he insists. He once described himself as a political conservative but a social liberal, although he prefers not to comment publicly on the subject. He will say that too much is being made of the polarisation of America society. It’s always been like that, he thinks, “and it’s been grossly undercovered. We’re supposed to laugh at our differences. My grandfather used to say, ‘If you’re different you’re going to get hit by rocks, so you need to learn to like rocks.’”
The January 29th Instagram post by Queens of the Stone Age stated:
“This man is a shallow, inept, multi-bankrupt declaring, narcissistic, narrow minded, out of touch, objectifying, barf inducing, fascist, clown penis… who also happens to be re-stup-redicu-lame. ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’― Edmund Burke.”
