19-05-2025
These Rock Icons Just Made History Playing a Concert Surrounded by ‘Dead People'
Rock isn't dead, but the audience for Queens of the Stone Age's new concert film was.
The modern rock legends—behind songs 'No One Knows,' 'Go With The Flow,' and 'I Sat By The Ocean'—announced their new concert film on May 13, one that shows them playing deep below the ground in the famed Catacombs of Paris.
Queens of the Stone Age: Alive in the Catacombs features the band playing a career-spanning setlist while utterly surrounded by human remains. The Catacombs of Paris are a 200-mile ossuary, with several million bodies buried within it in the 1700s. Skeletal remains are largely exposed, and many walls are built of skulls and bones.
Due to the nature of the catacombs—there are no outlets to plug into—the band plays acoustically for the most part, with makeshift percussion instruments and a three-piece string section.
'We're so stripped down because that place is so stripped down, which makes the music so stripped down, which makes the words so stripped down… It would be ridiculous to try to rock there,' said frontman Josh Homme in a press release.
'All those decisions were made by that space. That space dictates everything, it's in charge. You do what you're told when you're in there,' Josh added.
QOTSA filmed the concert in July 2024. Josh had wanted to play in the Catacombs since he first visited them 20 years ago. At the time, the City of Paris had never permitted any artist to play within the tunnels. QOTSA are the first to get such an okay.
'The Catacombs of Paris are a fertile ground for the imagination. It is important to us that artists take hold of this universe and offer a sensitive interpretation of it,' said Hélène Furminieux of Les Catacombes de Paris. 'The recordings resonate perfectly with the mystery, history, and a certain introspection, notably perceptible in the subtle use of the silence within the Catacombs.'
The concert film arrives on June 5 via Queen of the Stone Age's website.
