Queens Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme Reveals He Underwent Cancer Surgery Last Year

Queens Of The Stone Age vocalist/guitarist Josh Homme has spoken of the turbulent period that led to the band’s upcoming eighth studio album, “…In Times New Roman“. Besides going through an ugly divorce and ensuing custody battle over his children, a situation that has continued since 2019, Homme also revealed that he was diagnosed with cancer in 2022 and has since gone through a successful surgery to treat it.

In a recent interview with Revolver, he spoke:

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.

Homme also spoke of the death of his friends Rio Hackford, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins and longtime associate Mark Lanegan, who have passed away in recent years. Homme has since immortalized them on tattoos of their nicknames.

In his words, his state of mind through that period connects to the first single from “…In Times New Roman“, “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.

The new album “…In Times New Roman“ will be released this Friday, June 16.