QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE BACK AFTER CANCELLATION, ERA VULGARIS STILL BREAKING GROUND

Guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen reveals ‘Era Vulgaris’ is a different album in every way for Queens of the Stone Age

Queens of the Stone Age had to cancel their Newcastle date on the UK tour due to a chest infection suffered by frontman Josh Homme. He has recovered sufficiently and plans on finishing the tour in support of their latest effort Era Vulgaris in Birmingham and Reading respectively. The band worked diligently on ‘Era Vulgaris’ for over a year and it was the longest the band spent on a record to date. With ‘Lullabies to Paralyze’ the band had already written and rehearsed the material at great length before heading into the studio and with ‘Era Vulgaris’ the band flipped it around and went into the studio without any songs and took their time while experimenting on sounds and song structure.

We caught up with lead guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, to get his thoughts on ‘Era Vulgaris’ being different in every way for the band.

“Totally different, yeah, in every way. ‘Lullabies’ was pretty much all written on the road and prepared before we even set foot in the studio. ‘Era Vulgaris’ was sort of an experimental way through, where we just kind of had nothing written and no idea and we just jumped in the studio and messed around, made some mistakes and then finally decided that we were actually making a record and we should do something good. So yeah, it’s completely different.”

Although the lineup for Queens of the Stone Age has changed several times, Troy is once again a heavy song writing contributor to the ‘Era Vulgaris’ along with Homme and we talked about the working relationship between the two and how there’s no shortage of good ideas in the studio.

“I just think we kind of push each other’s buttons something strange. There’s no shortage of those kind of ideas so a lot of that was going on, on this record. We were sort of out doing each other and inspiring each other to do stuff differently. So, we had fun. We’re toying with each other all the time.”

Queens of the Stoneage are currently touring The U.K. in support of ‘Era Vulgaris’ with dates extending until December 4th in Reading. They return to America with dates beginning in Palm Desert, California on December 9th. The band has also announced an more extensive run of dates through Europe for the month of February and March of 2008.