Queens of the Stone Age rock Wilmington with blistering set, Cape Fear River jokes

Seattle rockers Queens of the Stone Age have been making noise on the rock scene since forming in the wake of the grunge movement in the mid-'90s.

In all that time, however, the band had never played Wilmington, a situation they rectified on Tuesday night when Queens of the Stone Age treated an enthusiastic crowd to a scorching, interactive set at Live Oak Bank Pavilion downtown.

After British rock trio Royal Blood opened with a pummeling set that you could feel in your bones, Queens of the Stone Age took the stage to cheers right at 8:30 p.m., opening with the darkly polished alt-rock song "No One Knows."

Led by the affable singer/guitarist/songwriter Josh Homme, the five-piece band — Troy Van Leeuwen (guitar), Dean Fertita (keys), Jon Theodore (drums) and Michael Shuman (bass) — played in front of a dazzling, triangular lighting rig that added lots of colorful flash to to the muscular, mid-tempo rock sound.

Full disclosure here: Queens of the Stone Age, or QOTSA, as they're known, is a band I've always been aware of but never super-familiar with, so Tuesday's concert was a bit of an education for me.

Homme is an engaging frontman. He's got a strong voice that shows its range by soaring into the occasional falsetto, and he uses it to deliver hard-driving songs about both emotional upset and fortitude. They were topics he echoed when he addressed the crowd directly, like when Homme spoke to a 12-year-old boy named Jackson who was watching the show with his dad from the front of a packed pit.

"Never look away. Whatever it is you're scared of, look into it," Homme offered earnestly. "The only way to go through life is with a machete through the jungle."

After introducing his band, Homme said, "And I'm your tenured professor, Dr. Joshua."

The concert was an evening of angular rhythms and moody rockers ("Carnavoyeur") that could be downright orchestral. Songs were accented with slashing, chugging riffs ("Smooth Sailing"), interlocking guitars, bluesy stomps and searing synths ("I Sat By the Ocean"). Van Leeuwen proved the Swiss army knife of the band by playing a whining slide guitar, a pedal steel, even an electric shaker. During "Emotion Sickness," Homme showed off his voice and sang a capella for a time.

Between songs, Homme exhorted the crowd with profanely good-natured affirmations: "Don't be afraid to sing. Don't be afraid to dance. Don't be afraid to love the person next to you. Don't be afraid."

Homme then re-directed his attention to young Jackson down front, telling the boy, "Do everything all the time. Life is short, yesterday is gone and tomorrow never comes. Right now is all that matters."

Homme was also quick with a joke, drawing laughs when he talked about playing next to "a beautiful river that's completely polluted," a reference to the PFAS chemicals that have tainted the Cape Fear River in recent years. "Don't drink it," he said, "but maybe (make love) next to it."

Then, looking up into the condo canyons that surround Live Oak Bank Pavilion, Homme said, "I don't know what day it is. But I love that we're keeping these people in their apartments awake."

Homme then said he didn't want to play the song the band was supposed to play next, and took a request for "Straight Jacket Fitting" from the crowd. During the song he took a wireless mic into the audience and sang part of the song from in the thick of the pit, drawing smiles and pointed phones from the crowd.

He then let the crowd choose "Better Living Through Chemistry," and got the audience singing with him during the sexy strut of "Make It Wit Chu," which segued into The Rolling Stones' "Miss You."

Perhaps exhausted, the crowd barely called for an encore. But the band came back out anyway, playing a spooky and spacey outro that built into a crescendo and yielded an epic solo from drumer Theodore. The show ended on a blistering note as the crowd was blasted with sound and bathed in blinding lights.

As the crowd filed out of the seats down front, one man was overheard to say, "That's the best $40 I've spent recently," proof that Live Nation's "dynamic pricing" model can sometimes work in the audience's favor, at least when concerts don't sell out right away.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Queens of the Stone Age rock Wilmington, NC