AS ANYONE who caught the band’s epic Saturday-night headline slot at last month’s Splendour in the Grass festival will tell you, Californian rock band Queens of the Stone Age are back.

The five-piece are about to release their seventh studio album Villains, and although it’s their first since 2013’s Like Clockwork, the members have remained busy in the intervening years.

Singer-guitarist Josh Homme produced Iggy Pop’s acclaimed Post Pop Depression album last year, and fellow guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Troy Van Leeuwen had been working with side projects including Sweethead and Gone is Gone, a band that also comprises Troy Sanders, bassist of prog-metal band Mastodon, and Tony Hajjar, drummer with Texan post-hardcore act At the Drive-In.

Van Leeuwen, 47, describes Queens of the Stone Age as “this monolith sort of mothership figure in all of our lives”, but says he also relishes the chance to collaborate with other artists.

“You’ve got to keep things fresh and you’ve got to work with other people just so you know that you’re not living in a bubble,” he says.

“The Queens can be its own universe at times so it’s important to get other inputs.”

media_camera The band in action in Darwin on their recent foray Down Under. Picture: Elise Derwin

To prepare for their latest album, the five members of Queens of the Stone Age did something they hadn’t done in more than a decade: “We decided that we would just get in a room and work on the songs as a band,” Van Leeuwen says.

“At the end of last year we spent most of November and December in a room just playing together, so we had a lot of the music done already before we went into the studio to record.

“For (2007 album) Eva Vulgaris and Like Clockwork, a lot of the writing was done while we were recording.

“That’s one way of going about things but it’s not my favourite way of doing things.”

In an interview with UK music magazine NME at the time of its release, Homme described Like Clockwork as “documenting the journey of moving forward”.

Just prior to recording that album, long-time drummer Joey Castillo had left the fold and was replaced by former Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore, and with the benefit of hindsight, Van Leeuwen concedes the writing and recording process represented a transitional period for the band.

“You don’t notice it when it’s happening because it takes a long time but when I come back to it – preparing for a tour, because you’ve got to remember how to play the songs – I listened to that record and I thought ‘wow, that was a dark time’ and there was a shift and I think it reflected in the music, which is ultimately what you’re supposed to do.

“This time, I think things are definitely different. Not that I would take away the experience of making the last record – it’s great and it still moves me, and that’s important, but this record for me feels like ‘yeah, let’s go, let’s move, let’s get out there and do stuff’ and it’s exciting.”

Queens of the Stone Age got up close and personal with some of the Territory's favourite reptile Queens of the Stone Age got up close and personal with some of the Territory's favourite reptile

On Villains, the band collaborated with Grammy-winning producer Mark Ronson, who has worked with everyone from Amy Winehouse and Adele to Paul McCartney and Bruno Mars.

Van Leeuwen says the decision to work with Ronson wasn’t so much about achieving a more polished sound, and had more to do with the band wanting to try a different approach.

“We just wanted some fresh blood,” he says.

“We normally do our own production so we wanted somebody to act as the producer that would allow us to be more of a band, and just be an extra set of ears.

“I trust him musically because everything I’ve heard him do from Amy Winehouse to Bruno Mars, there’s tonnes of musicality there.

“I think him being a musician and a DJ are both assets to our collaboration. So I think we just wanted to cut things live.

“The performances are a little more wild, but they do sound more professional because we have an extra set of ears there.”

That said, there is no doubting the accessibility of songs such as first single The Way You Used To. Homme’s vocals sound particularly powerful on the percussive-clap-laden track, and Van Leeuwen concurs, saying the frontman “really outdid himself on this record”.

“I think he’s getting better and better with age but there’s no training involved, unless drinking tequila is training, but I agree with you, I think that every record he gets better and better and works harder and harder at it.”

media_camera The band in action in Darwin on their recent foray Down Under. Picture: Elise Derwin

When asked what his personal favourite on the new album is, Van Leeuwen points to The Evil Has Landed, a riff-heavy, six-and-a-half-minute opus that harks back to some of the band’s earlier material from albums such as 2002’s Songs for the Deaf.

“It’s sort of this big piece that is constantly moving and evolving but to me it feels like it’s this tip of the hat to something we would have done maybe back in that era,” he says.

“But it’s definitely new and fresh and there’s a lot of information in that song and it’s really fun to play… yeah, that’s my favourite right now.”

Although he didn’t get to play on the Post Pop Depression album, Van Leeuwen – along with Homme, Dead Weather guitarist Dean Fertita, Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders and bassist Matt Sweeney – was part of Iggy Pop’s backing band for the tour that accompanied it.

“That was a great joy, to be around Iggy,” Van Leeuwen says.

“You’re like, oh my gosh, this guy’s 70 years old, and he’s giving everything he has every night, bleeding and diving into the audience, you’re like ‘I want to be like him when I grow up’.”

Villains (Matador/Remote Control Records) is out August 25