Queens of the Stone Age – Royal Hospital Kilmainham – 20/08/25 – Live Review
by Killian Laher

Queens of the Stone Age have been around for nearly 30 years at this stage, and although their albums are arriving with less frequency than they used to, they still attract a sizable following, based on the large crowd who gathered for their show in Kilmainham.  There was a late change to the lineup with Irish band Cliffords replacing Amyl and the Sniffers only two days before the concert.

First up were So Good, a pop-punk ensemble complete with synchronised dance routines and shouty vocals.  Their songs, by and large, lacked any real substance, with 1994 (dedicated to the headliners) being the best of a bad lot.  There was little to redeem the puerile likes of Hot, I Rewrote the Fucking Bible, and I Will Love You Until.  When the lead singer felt the need to ask, “Dublin, do you want another dick song?” it set the bar for their set.

Cliffords were next on the bill, and they were everything the previous band were not, a high energy ‘punk n roll’ band, and in Iona Lynch have a front woman with real presence.  With a bunch of songs that called to mind Sprints, Pillow Queens and even Florence and the Machine, their set went down really well with the audience.  Marsh and My Favourite Monster were early highlights, even the trumpets on the latter worked well.   A trio of fast-paced numbers saw the band finish on a high, having won over any disappointed Amyl and the Sniffers fans.

For a band that started out as a democratic collective, for the last number of years it’s been very much the Josh Homme show.  Homme and band were very much here to play a feel-good set of the ‘hits’, opening up with a rocking Regular John and No One Knows.  Playing songs from across their catalogue, they unleashed My God Is The Sun, In My Head, and I Never Came.  Time & Place was a curious inclusion, channelling Madonna’s Material Girl.  It wasn’t all balls out rock with Homme taking to the piano for The Vampyre of Time and Memory.  The older material definitely got a stronger reaction than the more recent material, but just when proceedings seemed to take a dip, they pulled Make It With Chu out of the bag.  Straight Jacket Fitting had shades of the Doors about it, and saw Josh Homme walk through a delirious crowd.  They rounded off the night with a rocking Go With The Flow and the pounding A Song for the Dead.

A great night of heavy rock from one of the more discerning bands on the fringes of the rock/metal scene.  Even if much of their strongest material predates the last 15 years, the band is still very much a living, breathing, creating entity.