In July 2024, Queens of the Stone Age became the first band ever permitted to perform in the underground Catacombs of Paris, an experience soon to be chronicled on the aptly named film Alive in the Catacombs. The project is due for purchase or rental June 7 from Matador, and will be released in a separate audio-only form later this year.
“If you’re ever going to be haunted, surrounded by several million dead people is the place,” says QOTSA frontman Josh Homme of the setting, which is a 200-mile ossuary established beneath the French capital in the 1780s and lined by exposed human skeletons. “I’ve never felt so welcome in my life.”
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QOTSA’s core group of Homme, Troy Van Leeuwen, Michael Shuman, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore were joined by a three-piece string section for the performance, which was recorded in single takes without both overdubs and proper electricity (apparently, a car battery was tweaked so as to power an electric piano). Alive in the Catacombs was produced by La Blogothèque and directed by Thomas Rames.
“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,” Homme says of the recordings, which feature the audible sounds of dripping water and the Catacombs’ signature echo. “It would be ridiculous to try to rock there. 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.”
“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,” adds Catacombs director of communications Hélène Furminieux. “Going underground and confronting reflections on death can be a deeply intense experience. Josh seems to have felt in his body and soul the full potential of this place. The recordings resonate perfectly with the mystery, history, and a certain introspection, notably perceptible in the subtle use of the silence within the Catacombs.”
QOTSA will play eight U.S. shows next month, including the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tn., before embarking on an extensive summer European tour through Aug. 27 at the Rock N Roll Circus in Sheffield, England.
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