About “Villains”

Villains is the seventh album from Queens of the Stone Age, released August 25, 2017 via Matador Records.

Frontman Josh Homme talked about the meaning behind the title, Villains, in a press release stating that it had nothing to do with our current political situation.

The title Villains isn’t a political statement. It has nothing to do with Trump or any of that shit. It’s simply 1) a word that looks fantastic and 2) a comment on the three versions of every scenario: yours, mine and what actually happened… Everyone needs someone or something to rail against—their villain—same as it ever was. You can’t control that. The only thing you can really control is when you let go.

Speaking with the New York Times in August 2017, Josh had this to say about the band’s sound:

This is our seventh record, and we’re lucky enough — forget lucky, we’ve worked hard enough to have our own sound. But I worry about being too static, that it becomes a parody of itself. So I just was, like, we need to burn the effigies of things we would normally do, and to hang on to the idea of who we are but redefine our sound for modern days. For this record, it was like, man, we should risk our own reputations. We should take our old sound and screw it over.

In an August 2017 interview with DIY Magazine, Josh spoke about the music video for The Way You Used To Do as well as the new direction the band’s music is taking.