Queens of the Stone Age have let loose the second piece of music from their upcoming Mark Ronson-produced album Villains. Following the modern, bluesy single “The Way You Used to Do,” Josh Homme and co. are back with “The Evil Has Landed,” a six-and-a-half-minute opus that leans into QotSA’s psych-rock DNA. The band’s trademark fuzz guitar leads are in full, orchestrated flight here, and that surprise rock-out coda is also the kind of audio sucker-punch the band excels in.
Homme told Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe that the song was an intentionally concise epic. “It’s six minutes, it goes by quick, and nothing ever really repeats itself,” he says. Listen to “The Evil Has Landed” below, as well as Homme’s chat with Lowe about how the California desert is like Mad Max.
