Words and Photos by Andrew Parks

“So we’re playing our first album all the way through tonight,” said Queens of the Stone Age’s towering frontman, speaking to a capacity Terminal 5 crowd who didn’t seem to mind. “There’s always that one person who didn’t know, though. So I say to that person, ‘Fuck you.’ And I mean that in the nicest way possible. More like ‘fudge you’ or something.”

Josh Homme, everyone—still a comedian after all these years. That’s not the only thing that’s stood the test of time, either. The band’s self-titled debut also sounds as fresh today as it did 12 years ago. From the cutthroat chords of “Regular John” to the careening coda of “You Can’t Quit Me Baby,” it’s a thick, malted slab of sludge-pop and Route 66 rock that actually translates better to a big room than many of their latter-day singles. Probably because the songwriting is rawer than an omakase special, although QOTSA did leave us with quite the night cap: two encores, including such relatively recent fan favorites as “Burn the Witch,” “Little Sister,” and “Make It Wit Chu.”

Check out a stack of live shots from last night below, along with a streaming version of the record of the hour…