Perfecth, neuvième album de Queens of the Stone Age (Matador Records).
Queens of the Stone Age have unveiled the details of “Perfecth,” their ninth studio album, due October 30 via Matador Records. The announcement comes with a run of Australian and New Zealand tour dates in December, ahead of a full slate of 2027 shows the band says will be announced “in the coming weeks.” Three years after “In Times New Roman…,” Josh Homme’s band returns with nine tracks recorded between Los Angeles and New Orleans.
A deliberately “imperfect” title
The album’s name, spelled “Perfecth,” is not a typo. Josh Homme has said he wanted a deliberately warped version of the word “perfect”: nothing in this world is perfect, he argues, yet everything seems to want to be. Produced by Homme himself alongside bassist Michael Shuman, the record was built with the same lineup that has toured together for years around the Homme-Van Leeuwen-Fertita-Theodore core, in place since original drummer Joey Castillo’s departure more than a decade ago.
The tracklist runs nine songs deep: “It’s Only Love,” “Insignificant Other,” “Where the Goth Girls At?,” “Mono,” “From the Cliff,” “Sunday,” “Easy Street,” “Phantom Limb” and “Run Away from the Mob.” Two singles have already circulated ahead of release: “Easy Street” first, followed by “Insignificant Other,” which came with a lyric video. Drummer Jon Theodore has said the second song came together late in the day, after hours of studio frustration — a late take the band ultimately chose to keep as is rather than rework in rehearsal, a reminder of how much of the band’s catalogue has been built on first instincts rather than polish.
Distance and disappearance
On substance, Homme has described “Insignificant Other” as a song about distance: how someone can be your entire world, then simply vanish. It’s a theme that cuts against the band’s sometimes brash image, but fits the more introspective streak already present on “In Times New Roman…,” a record shadowed by Homme’s illness and recovery. The album will ship on CD, standard black vinyl and a transparent variant exclusive to independent retailers, alongside a gatefold deluxe edition sold only through the band’s and Matador’s own webstores.
A tour that already looks global
Queens of the Stone Age kick off the album’s live promotion in December with a run of shows across Australia and New Zealand. The band has signaled that 2027 dates will follow “in the coming weeks,” without naming territories yet, though fans in Europe and North America both expect to be included given the band’s usual touring pattern. That points to “Perfecth” getting the same long promotional run as each of the group’s eight previous albums since it formed in the late 1990s, out of Palm Desert and Los Angeles, in the desert-rock lineage first carved out by Kyuss, the band Homme played in before going solo with this project.
With “Perfecth,” Queens of the Stone Age keep up a consistency that’s rare for a rock band this far into its run: nine albums in a little over twenty-five years, without ever quite repeating the previous formula. The band has built its reputation on that ability to reinvent itself record after record, from the more frontal hard rock of its early years to the poppier experiments of “…Like Clockwork” or “Villains,” and the heavier, more anxious tone of “In Times New Roman…”. Whether this new batch of songs, caught between tension and self-deprecation, earns a place among the band’s most memorable records will depend on how it plays once the tour gets underway and the album has had time to settle in with longtime fans and newcomers alike, on both sides of the Atlantic.
