Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with Revolver, Queens Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme opened up about the difficult years that resulted in the band’s album “…In Times New Roman“ (out June 16). The frontman went through an acrimonious divorce and custody battle and has since revealed that he underwent cancer surgery as well.

Homme said the following about the cancer:

“I never say it can’t get any worse. I never say that, and I wouldn’t advise it. But I do say it can get better. Cancer is just the cherry on top of an interesting time period, you know? I’m extremely thankful that I’ll get through this, and I’ll look back at this as something that’s fucked up — but will have made me better. I’m cool with that. There’s a lot of stuff I want to do. And there’s a lot of people I want to do that with.”

On top of all this, Homme also lost a number of friends including Rio Hackford, Taylor Hawkins, and Mark Lanegan. His internal struggles led to the creation of the song “Emotion Sickness“:

“I definitely had a serious case of emotion sickness. There were times I almost didn’t make it. It’s OK for me to ruminate on that. It’s not OK to stay there, feel too sorry for myself. This has been the darkest four years of my life. But that’s OK, too. In the heartaches, my mistakes, these deaths and my own physical things I’m dealing with — even though all that has occurred and smashed my old life to pieces, those pieces I’ve been able to build into a ship that’s about to launch. I will float into my new life from all those pieces.”

In other news, Homme also confirmed that he doesn’t intend to tour like he used to:

“Things have changed a little bit for me. However long I go away, I must come back for at least that length of time.”