Wiki
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Release Date
6 June 2017
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Length
9 tracks
Villains is the seventh studio album by American rock band Queens of the Stone Age, released on August 25, 2017 through Matador. The album was announced on June 14, with a teaser trailer taking the form of a comedy skit featuring the band performing a polygraph test with Liam Lynch. The first single, "The Way You Used to Do", was released the following day along with the announcement of a world tour. Villains is the first Queens of the Stone Age album to not feature any special guest musicians, the second to not feature Mark Lanegan, and the first to feature Jon Theodore as full time member of the band.
Several of the songs from the album were previewed in some form prior to its release. The album's final track, "Villains of Circumstance", was first premiered by Josh Homme in 2014 at an acoustic concert for James Lavelle's Meltdown Festival, while "The Evil Has Landed" was performed by the band during their first gig of 2017 on June 22 at The Rapids Theatre in Niagara Falls, New York. "The Evil Has Landed" was released as a single on August 10, 2017. In addition to this, several snippets of songs have been featured in teaser trailers released online in promotion of the album, including a short clip of the album's opening track, "Feet Don't Fail Me", as well as an a cappella from the intro to the same song.
The album has been described as "a little looser and more uptempo than their last release ...Like Clockwork and "more carefree". Josh Homme cited his interest in dancing, working with Mark Ronson, and the song, "Uptown Funk" for the direction of the album. Kory Grow of Rolling Stone notes, "While the guitars still have the limber crunch of Queens albums past, they're playing around easy-breezy disco beats and chilly synths on songs like "Feet Don't Fail Me" and "Un-Reborn Again.""
The cover art for Villains was designed by graphic artist Boneface, who designed the artwork for Queens of the Stone Age's previous album, ...Like Clockwork. It was the first time that the band had returned to an artist to request artwork on a subsequent album. In an interview with the Juxtapoz magazine, Boneface talked about returning to create a cover for the album and his working relationship with Josh Homme. In the article he stated that, "Returning was honestly a pretty daunting task. People seemed to like all the artwork I did for the last album, so I felt I had something to live up to. Also, the fact that QOTSA tend to use a different artist for each album cover made it kind of special that they decided to use me again. I think Josh likened our relationship to Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman in the initial rallying call. So after I’d decided to plunge back into the QOTSA jacuzzi, I started work the way I usually do, just trying to create something cool. I did a bunch of preliminary drawings before I’d heard any new songs or we’d even talk about the album, and one of those sketches actually ended up being the basis for the album cover." Each band member was given their own artwork, with Homme's on the front cover, and the rest of the band members on the back. An alternate vinyl cover that was released exclusively through independent record stores had a light blue tint over the image, gave Josh Homme a bloody nose, and the devil behind Homme giving two middle fingers.
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