Particular credit should go to guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, though, who’s been a constant since 2002 and has done much to maintain focus on their sense of effortlessly thrusting cool. Staying true to the collaborative nature of the scene that spawned them, there’s been something of a revolving-door membership around Josh, with luminaries like Kyuss bandmate and Mondo Generator-frontman Nick Oliveri, Nirvana / Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, Screaming Trees legend Mark Lanegan and great keyboardist Natasha Shneider coming and going. “That way everyone's happy and it's more of a party.” “Rock should be heavy enough for the boys and sweet enough for the girls,” Josh explained in interviews early on. Reworking a nickname given by legendary producer Nick Goss (‘Kings Of The Stone Age’) into something less aggressively macho, the eventual QOTSA moniker would be emblematic of the sex and swagger with which they would take over the world. Effectively a one-man show at its outset, Queens Of The Stone Age was originally dubbed Gamma Ray, but the German power-metallers of the same name forced a change. The lineup for the 2024 edition of the French hard rock festival Hellfest will featuring a quartet of heavy hitters. When seminal Palm Desert outfit Kyuss called it a day in 1995, few would have predicted that towering, red-headed guitarist Josh Homme would pivot to form one of the most popular and influential bands of the next 25 years. Foo Fighters, Metallica, Queens of the Stone Age to Headline 2024 Hellfest.
