2008 is rapidly becoming the year of Trent Reznor. In the first six months alone, the nucleus of Nine Inch Nails has already released a full album of brutal new rockers at no cost to fans (The Slip) and a five-dollar, 36-track instrumental album (Ghosts I-IV), the first nine tracks of which were also free. With a dream-team lineup arranged for a big summer tour set to start next month, and word of a Year Zero television series based on his 2007 future dystopia concept album (and you can be sure it won’t be any goddamned reality show), there’s no end in sight for the pioneer of the music industry’s own inevitable industrial revolution. Trent continues to beat the majors to the punch, bringing their most terrifyingly hideous nightmares to reality: the strings have been cut, and some of the puppets are dancing just fine, all on their own.

Josh Homme is not what you’d call a soft-spoken guy. Locked in a Detroit hotel room, the Queens Of The Stone Age frontman answers the phone by yelling “Johnny Firecloud” over and over again. We’ve never spoken before, yet he greets me like a long lost drinking buddy, the conversational equivalent of a fireworks show. The head Queen refuses to call Detroit by its proper name throughout the interview, instead pronouncing it “Day-twaa” because “I’m trying to help it. The city needs my help.” All of this seems rather natural as we discuss Trent Reznor, Radiohead and Homme’s focused hatred for the record industry.

Antiquiet: Is the Queens sound a conscious or deliberate atmosphere?
Josh Homme: The thing is, that’s from years of doing whatever you want. Everything you do is habit-forming. You will form a habit of one style or another. And it might as well be getting people used to the notion that you’re going to do whatever you want. ‘Cause all the other habits include cow-towing to what somebody else wants. And there’s never a time to do that in music. As I understand it, your obligation is to play your favorite music that noone else plays, so you have to. And my favorite music is hooky, quirky, arty, dark, surprising, heavy, groovy, soft, emotional but not emo. It wears a sweater because it’s cold, not because it’s stylistically there.

Antiquiet: And it doesn’t try to fit into girl pants.
Josh Homme: Yeah, like there’s enough room for your cock and balls in your pants. And it’s in touch with its feelings, but it’s not a fucking pussy, man. Like, I need Lee Marvin, and I need Robert Mitchum. But I don’t need Sylvester Stallone, unless it’s Tango and Cash, ’cause that movie is fucking awesome. Or unless it’s my new steak cologne called Stologne.