Queens of the Stone Age: Turnin' On The Screw

"There's only so much you can do to describe it," reasons Troy Van Leeuwen., "at some point you've just got to step up and play."

Billed as one of the Sunday night headliners at T in the Park - a healthy leap up the bill from their last appearance two years ago - Scotland is about to learn, first hand, about what desert collective Queens of the Stone Age have been cooking up since 2005's Lullabies to Paralyze. A new dawn, the Era Vulgaris has arrived for the Queens, as Josh Homme's multi-instrumentalist cohort tells us…

"This one is a very modern record. Well, modern in that it sounds different for Queens of the Stone Age. It's also modern in the sense that it was written and recorded at the same time; in the studio, fresh out of the tap, unfiltered almost, you know, raw and it's very short, 11 songs. Usually we pack it full, but we just figured that, this time, the most concise statement, like: 'Boom, boom, boom, I know you don't have the time and neither do I, so here's what we have to say and we're gonna do it really quick and to the point' was the way to go. It's modern in that it's a continuous play and it's a quick message."

In terms of that message and thinking about the unusual publicity surrounding the album – we witnessed a small blimp circling Palm Desert, California with the illuminated message "Q.O.T.S.A - You Know What You Did – Era Vulgaris," back in April – it seems there's a mission statement of sorts in there. Besides messing with peoples' heads, what's it about?

"The title is basically a loose rope around all the songs. It's really just saying that, in this modern age; this is what we see, this is what we think and we're into our generation. I think it's a good time, there's a lot of figuring out that people want to do and have to do and there's a lot of information out there and while people are figuring out what they want to do there's all this other stuff to check out. So, in the process of figuring out what it is that you want out of life there's all this stuff you get to try and it's in the trying that you almost stay there. You almost go 'wow, there's so much here, I have to make sure I get through all of that before I move on.'"

Equally as mysterious as the album's PR trail is the subject of who played a part in the recording of it: whether your estranged part-time vocalist Mark Lanegan was back, if Jesse Keeler from DeathFromAbove1979 was onboard to play bass, how Trent Reznor fitted into the equation and so on. So who was involved in the end and what did they bring to the table?

"Jesse from DeathFromAbove came down to do a soundtrack with us, but it didn't work out; we ended up doing a totally different song to what he was doing, so he's not involved at all. With Trent, we toured with Nine Inch Nails last year and I've also done so when I played with A Perfect Circle so I've run into him many, many times and we just seemed to hit it off. As he was finishing Year Zero there was sort of a tit for tat situation where Josh went and sang on something. I'm not sure it ended up on the record but he came down and sang on our title track and it was very quick, he's such a pro. He showed up, sang and it was done. He's not dicking around."

But isn't that track – the title track at that - missing from the final master of the album?

"It's kind of like our little joke. Actually, believe it or not it didn't fit within the sequence of the record, it sounds a little different to most of it. The record has a specific flow and we couldn't find a slot for it, so we just figured it could be like a commercial for the record. There's an ode to the song though, it's like a keyboard interlude between songs that borrows the melody line. The other contribution was where Lanegan sang on River in the Road, it's almost a choral affect, lots of vocals, so you can't really tell it's him, which is sad."

What? Mark Lanegan's vocals, buried?

"That's what we thought. Julian Casablancas turned up for Sick, Sick Sick, which he also played Casio guitar synth on. It's the crappiest guitar; it's like a toy with a plastic body and these plastic strings. He wouldn't let it go, he loved it so much he kept playing it and playing it until we had to say 'OK, you can play on the song.'"

And you didn't have it in your heart to say 'look, no, that's not going to fly Casablancas, get out?'

"Right, but that's what we're all about. It's like, who would ever pick up a toy guitar synth and say 'well I'm gonna play this with Queens of the Stone Age'? He played it and somehow it works…I dunno why."

So you've got Mr Casablancas from the Strokes, fucking it up on a Queens track with a Casio synth guitar?

"Fucking it up, old school."

…Reznor, Lanegan and Casablancas? That's a healthy stable of collaborators…

"Oh yeah. Another one to mention is Chris Goss who co-produced the record with us. He played a lot of keyboards, some guitar and his influence is always welcome…gotta love Chris and Masters of Reality are great, one of my favourite bands."

The revolving cast of players seems to fit quite neatly with the open door ethos the band often promotes, but the core line up of you, Josh and Joey (Castillo – drums) is the most static that the Queens has ever been, isn't it?

"Joey and I started on the tour for Songs For The Deaf at just about the same time and we did the last record too. The three of us have a good thing going but we don't really take it for granted that it's always going to be this way. It's static that it's the same people but we're always trying to show each other something new and I think this record is a good representation of that. It displays what a band like this can do, with nothing prepared and I'm really proud of it."

Word has it that you have a couple of new players touring with you. Who rounds out the touring band that you're bringing with you to Balado?

"Our new bass player Michael Shuman is from Wires on Fire. Alain [Johannes] and Natasha [Shneider, both of cult band Eleven and part time members of the Queens themselves] produced their album. The keyboardist, Dean Fertita, was on tour with the Raconteurs last year, he was their 5th member. They're gelling well with the band, really good players. Some fresh blood, y'know?"

Is it a cut and dry case of bringing them onboard for the tour or is it more of a loose arrangement?

"Well, everybody starts off on a casual level as far as it's like: 'come on in, come on in, no contracts necessary…"

Make yourself at home but keep yer mitts off my slippers?

"Ha. We make it as comfortable as possible for everybody, but it's up to them. It's in a good spot right now and it's just beginning so everybody's excited."

From the moment you got involved with the band yourself, you've said that you were expected to learn a lot of tricks on a lot of songs with a lot of instruments in a very short space of time. As Queens' resident go-to guy for all manner of instrumentation these days, what did you pick up to experiment with this time? Has there ever been an instrument you've struggled to get to grips with? Casio synth guitar excluded, of course….

"No, no, that thing doesn't count, it's in a realm all of its own. I will say that I've definitely experienced with synthesizers on records and, you know, when you hear the word synthesizer it automatically conjures up Bon Jovi or something…"

Asia?

"Yes, Asia too…"

And let's not forget Enya…

"…oh yeah, and Enya, it's definitely not that kind of synthesizer, it's more along the lines of early Eno noise, distortion and things that sound wrong. It was fun to experiment with that. As far as one instrument that I picked up once and I haven't picked it up since? It's the trumpet, there's no way. Dude, if I was like 5 years old and my mind was still malleable, maybe I could do it. But, no, no…not now."

Which brings us back to that original wankadelic question: in what way have you seen the band evolve over the last five years, since you've become involved?

"I've heard somebody say that they've been at a rehearsal of ours where we've been trying to communicate to what this or that part is to each other and they were like 'I can't even follow you guys, you have your own language.' It's foreign to everybody else and it allows us to move quickly and freely. We're all just picking up whatever slack the other person has and I guess my role in the band is to kind of harmonise and embellish the rawness and add colour. Joey's the rock and the engine of the band, whereas Josh is the head, he's the navigator."

Time to step up and play, then.

By Van Leeuwen's own humble admission, the most recent incarnation of the Queens has quickly become a "tight unit" and Era Vulgaris only sees their game coming back up to the indelible par that their fans have come to expect, over the years and through the woods.