Queens of the Stone Age New Album Perfecth Lands Next Week

Perfecth, the Queens of the Stone Age New Album, is almost here, and it comes with a complaint hotline. The band's ninth studio record arrives late in October 2026 through Matador Records, ending a wait that has stretched across cryptic teasers, three singles, and a summer of speculation. Co-produced by frontman Josh Homme and longtime bassist Michael Shuman, the nine-track record is built around love, loss, and what Homme calls the wisdom that arrives as a gift from both. And if you do not like it, the band has set up a real phone line for your gripes and grievances.

The rollout has been unusually playful even by this band's standards. Perfecth was recorded across sessions in New Orleans and Los Angeles, with Homme describing the material as songs that intentionally come from different emotional places. The title itself is his deliberate misspelling of "perfect," and his explanation doubles as the record's thesis: "Nothing in this world is perfect, but everything seems to be 'perfecth'." That line, given in a statement around the announcement and reported by Blunt Magazine, suggests an album comfortable with imperfection as a subject, not just a sound.

Three singles, one strange phone number

The album's preview campaign unfolded in three distinct chapters. First came "Easy Street" over the summer, a collaboration with country singer Nikki Lane that showed off the record's softer, more reflective side. Then "Insignificant Other" arrived as the album's centerpiece, captured in only two takes so the five players could keep a loose, spontaneous feel. Homme described it as a song about distance, about how someone can be an entire world and then simply vanish, and about the strange vertigo of being on the receiving end of that.

The third single is the strangest of the set. "Where the Goth Girls At?" is a playful track about teenage crushes, inspired by Homme's memories of watching goth girls give makeovers to shoppers at a Palm Desert department store as a kid. The song carries a darker undertow: its lyric about never feeling so alive as the day he almost died traces back to a near-drowning accident when he was twelve, which he discussed in an interview with Consequence. The accompanying video, made by Christopher Gruse and Tony Wolski with production company Hungry Man, features goth girls taking over a power plant, with appearances by comedian Steve Agee among others.

Then there is the hotline. The band's announcement invites dissatisfied listeners to air complaints at a Palm Desert area-code number, joking that a live ear might be on the other end. It is a very on-brand move for a group that has always treated self-seriousness as the enemy, and it doubles as marketing: the complaint line is the kind of detail fans will actually call.

A different way of making the record

Perfecth is the first time Homme and Shuman have produced one of the band's albums as a duo. That is a real shift. The previous record was produced collectively by the entire band, and the 2013 breakthrough was handled with outside collaborators. Handing the controls to the frontman and his bassist suggests a tighter, more personal process, and the two-take recording of the centerpiece track backs that up: this is a band trying to capture moments rather than polish them.

The setting mattered too. Splitting sessions between New Orleans and Los Angeles gave the record two very different rooms, and Homme has said every song sounds like it comes from a different world, on purpose. The aim, in his words, was to stitch together emotions revolving around love, lust, foolishness, and the wisdom that follows. For a band often filed under desert rock, a label Homme himself has resisted in favor of something freer, the new record sounds like another attempt to outrun categorization.

The comparison that will follow the band is inevitable: how does this sit next to a catalog built on some of the most recognizable riffs of the last three decades? The honest answer is that nobody knows until it is out, which is exactly why the three singles were chosen to show range. One is a duet with a country singer, one is a loose groove captured almost live, one is a joke that turns out to be about mortality. If the rest of the track list, which also includes "Mono," "Sunday," and "Phantom Limb," covers similar ground, the album should feel less like a statement and more like a tour of the band's instincts.

What happens after release

The record will be available digitally and on CD and vinyl, with a limited deluxe edition for collectors. But the bigger news for fans is what comes next: the band heads to Australia in December 2026 for a run of arena shows, their first tour there in nearly three years. Primus joins as main support, with Melbourne's Tropical Fuck Storm opening, making it one of the more stacked rock bills of the year.

For listeners, the practical part is simple: the album lands within days, the singles are already streaming, and the deluxe vinyl will likely move fast given the band's collector-minded fanbase. The complaint hotline, meanwhile, is already doing its job as a conversation starter. Whether the record converts skeptics or just gives existing fans nine new songs to argue about, the rollout has reminded everyone what this band does best: make rock music that refuses to take itself, or its audience, entirely seriously.

And that is arguably the point of the title. A band nine albums deep could coast on legacy. Instead, the Queens of the Stone Age New Album leans into the idea that nothing lands perfectly, and that the attempt is the art. As reported by Daypop via Rock 105, with additional detail from Juice Magazine's rundown of the announcement, the record is positioned as both a fresh start and a summation. Late October will tell whether the songs live up to the framing, but the band has at least made the wait entertaining.

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