Queens of the Stone Age have shared ‘Run Away From the Mob’, the closing track from ‘Perfecth’, their ninth studio album, out this Friday, 30 October, via Matador Records. The song arrives with a lyric video and was originally recorded in 2013 with Dave Grohl on drums.
“The reason these songs didn’t get finished until now is because I wasn’t qualified to finish them, yet,” Josh Homme admits. Of the lyrics, he said: “It’s a letter. A last one, addressed to an oldest son — ‘if you’re reading this, everything went wrong, and here’s what you have to do.’ The end is the sound of a father standing behind his son.”
It’s the fourth taste of the album, following ‘Easy Street’, ‘Insignificant Other’ and ‘Where the Goth Girls At?’. Produced by Homme and Michael Shuman, the nine-song record was made, according to the band, in the spirit of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by filling its cracks with gold. Its songs map different forms of love: of family, friends and others both significant and insignificant. Homme has said the title reflects his belief that the word “perfect” doesn’t exist.
“Every song sounds like it’s from a different world,” Homme says. “And that’s on purpose, because it’s trying to stitch together all these emotions revolving around love, lust, foolishness, and the sort of wisdom that comes as a gift from all that.” Sessions took place everywhere from New Orleans to Los Angeles, with the line-up of Homme, Shuman, Troy Van Leeuwen, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore. It’s their first album since 2023’s ‘In Times New Roman’.
Early reviews have been strong in the British press. Record Collector gave it five stars and called it “a career highlight to file alongside their classics. Yes, even ‘Songs for the Deaf’,” while MOJO’s four-star review called it “exactly the record a questing 30-year-old rock band ought to make.”
After a summer supporting System of a Down in European stadiums and Foo Fighters in North America, the band have announced the ‘Perfecth World Tour 2027’. The North American leg runs from 1 to 24 May, opening at San Diego’s Viejas Arena and including the Kia Forum, TD Garden and outdoor shows at Red Rocks and Milwaukee’s American Family Insurance Amphitheater. Pixies and Wheelchair Sports Camp support on every date, and tickets go on sale on Thursday 29 October at 10am local time.
Before that, the band head to Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand in November and December, then to Latin America in March, including Mexico City and Lollapalooza in Argentina, Chile and Brazil. Select European headline dates for 2027 will be announced on 2 November. In the UK, the band’s most recent shows came this July, as System of a Down’s guests at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
