Queens of the Stone Age opened another chapter on October 30, 2026, with the release of Perfecth, their first studio album since In Times New Roman… and a record that once again finds the band questioning its own methods rather than simply refining a familiar formula.
At the centre of that process is Jon Theodore, who has now spent more than a decade behind the kit for Queens of the Stone Age. What began as joining a band with a long and distinctive history of drummers has gradually become something else: Theodore’s own rhythmic vocabulary is now firmly embedded in the identity of modern QOTSA.
Perfecth also appears to embrace a tension that has always existed within the band — the space between precision and instability. Some of its most revealing moments came not from carefully constructed studio sessions, but from musicians reacting to one another in real time.
One of the clearest examples is “Insignificant Other”, a song that emerged late during a frustrating studio day and was captured almost spontaneously. The band later attempted to recreate the performance under technically better conditions, only to discover that the original contained something they simply could not manufacture again.
That tension — between control and instinct, technical ability and restraint, perfection and character — runs through our conversation with Theodore.
Speaking with Summa Inferno, the drummer discusses the making of Perfecth, his musical communication with Josh Homme, the importance of groove within Queens of the Stone Age, what Alive in the Catacombs taught him about percussion, and the point at which he stopped feeling like someone interpreting the band’s language and began helping define it.
