Gig played on 03/05/07

Since their previous two London dates were at Brixton Academy and Koko, it's a given that this late-notice showing by Californian metal-boogie masters Queens Of The Stone Age at such a tiny venue (maximum capacity, 350) should be something of An Event. Essentially a sneak preview of their upcoming fourth album, "Era Vulgaris" (out June 11), it's drawn mostly the fan-club faithful, plus a smattering of industry types. It feels, then, like an exclusive party, with an excess of sweaty bonhomie and a superior soundtrack.

A basement dive with an illustrious jazz and punk history and no backstage area, the 100 Club necessitates a walk through the crowd for the band, who are clearly enjoying the novelty of such an intimate show. Ginger-haired jock-with-a-brain Josh Homme - whose surname is impossibly perfect for such a manly icon of heavy rock - sports a black, cut-off T-shirt that reveals forearms of formidable meatiness, a foil for guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen's sharp, pin-stripe suit. Joining them is new bass player Mikey Shuman, a long-haired émigré from Wires On Fire, who's celebrating his 22nd birthday today but must feel as if all his Christmases have come at once.

Homme graciously thanks us for coming (sir, the pleasure is entirely ours), asks if we're ready (never readier, dude) and then plunges his gang into "Misfit Love", one of the new album's highlights and conclusive proof of QOTSA's ability to combine the feline and sensuously hip-swinging with the ferocious and seriously heads-down. It's a brilliant mix of liquid melodicism and cold-hearted heavy fuzz and makes fine use of Homme's delicate falsetto (also employed tonight on white-funk newbie "I'm Designer"), which crucially feminises QOTSA, illustrating their distaste for the male-specific, meathead tendencies of so much heavy rock/stoner metal.

Their tearaway set favours the new (seven tunes) over the old (four) and features their trademark riffs punched from white-hot sheet metal (in particular, on "Battery Acid"), the glammy "Into The Hollow", which suggests T Rex tackling "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", the brutally staccato, sexualised energy of lead single "Sick Sick Sick" (DFA1979 do Bowie's "Beauty And The Beast") and the delicious blend of desert-ravaged doom metal and lascivious, slow-grind boogie that is "Turning On The Screw". They pepper this selection with the poppy "Little Sister", the malevolent "Burn The Witch", "Mexicola" and, finally, "Songs For The Dead".

Then thanks, goodbyes and Queens Of The Stone Age are gone, without an encore, despite the pleading. Fair enough, really - a force of nature can't be doing with social niceties.

by Sharon O'Connell