Queens of the Stone Age ‘Alive in the Catacombs’ now available on YouTube

If you missed it the first time around, Queens of the Stone Age have now put their Alive in the Catacombs concert film on YouTube in full.

Filmed deep beneath Paris in July 2024, the performance sees QOTSA playing reworked versions of their songs inside the Catacombs, a 320-kilometre ossuary lined wall-to-wall with skulls and bones from the 1700s. 

Casual venue, really.

Frontman Joshua Homme calls it “the biggest audience we’ve ever played for,” which feels fair when you’re serenading several million skeletons.

The Catacombs gig had been a long time coming. Homme first floated the idea nearly 20 years ago, but the city of Paris had never approved a musical performance in the tunnels. The band waited it out, got the nod, and finally made it happen.

The performance sees QOTSA stripping back and reworking songs from across their catalogue, leaning into the eerie acoustics and heavy atmosphere of the space. It’s intimate, unsettling, and completely unlike a standard rock gig, which is exactly the point.

Alongside the concert film, the band have also dropped Alive in Paris and Before, a behind-the-scenes mini documentary showing how the whole thing came together, plus some insight into Homme’s health battle around the time of filming.

The film is directed by Thomas Rames and produced by Blogothèque, and it’s every bit as eerie, intimate, and intense as you’d hope.

No tickets, no paywall, no catch. Just Queens of the Stone Age playing beneath Paris, for free, whenever you’re ready to press play. How good.