Queens of the Stone Age at the PNE Forum on Wednesday, April 30

Even though the puker slumped over in the Forum’s side-entrance stairs would have vehemently disagreed with him, Josh Homme sounded sincere enough when he announced, "It’s great to be drunk in Vancouver, so cheers, everyone."

Unlike the megaloaded stairwell guy, who filled a Subway bag with his stomach contents while a poor paramedic watched, the founder, frontman, and main creative engine of Queens of the Stone Age had every reason to be thrilled. Even though QOTSA played these parts just eight short months ago, the band’s sold-out-well-in-advance Wednesday stand drew a capacity audience of more than 4,000 fans. Proving that Homme’s days as a cult hero are long behind him, the audience was pretty much split between dudes who look like they listen to CFOX and dudettes who date unoriginal dudes who listen to CFOX.

Before the set, half of the Forum was packed into the on-site beer "garden", which had all the charm of a grimy factory-farm holding pen. The long lineups were a good indicator that Canadian-chugging beer drinkers have usurped Kyuss-obsessed bong-huffers as the Queens of the Stone Age’s core audience. That’s funny, because even though QOTSA no longer advertises itself as stoner rock, much of this night left you feeling a little stoned.

After working a woozy groove sexier than Angelina Jolie with from-the-vaults opener "Regular John", Homme wasted no time getting to the weirdness. As dream-fevered as it seemed on Songs for the Deaf, "First It Giveth" sounded like a 12-inch remix that had been glazed with Mudhoney and then played two disorienting speeds too slow. However, neither that nor the midsong carnival-waltz breakdown made it any less awesome.

Even though QOTSA’s latest, Era Vulgaris, stalled at around 200,000 copies, that didn’t stop Homme from salting the night with offerings from a record that no-one evidently wants to hear. At least the hulking redhead and his four hired guns made things interesting. The album’s jagged and spooky "Sick, Sick, Sick" played out like something you’d hear on rock radio in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, while a distortion-ripped "Make It Wit Chu" was as hot as the Eagles of Death Metal are utterly sexless.

Homme has made no secret of his desire to challenge his fans, 90 percent of whom want what he won’t give them: a radio-friendly sequel to the platinum-selling Songs for the Deaf. This pigheaded refusal to pander to the masses resulted in a show that never quite achieved liftoff. After stretches that dragged on worse than the films of Pedro Almodóvar (was anyone really clamouring for "Infinity", or for that matter anything off Lullabies to Paralyze?), Homme pulled out the heavy artillery at the end of the night, unleashing the Songs for the Deaf howitzers "You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire" and "No One Knows".

The QOTSA mastermind is a cruel taskmaster. Drummer Joey Castillo was an tirelessly inventive, one-man locomotive all night. His reward? That would be having to seriously buck up for "No One Knows", the kind of epic that gives Modern Drummer subscribers reason to put the rusty razorblades back in the medicine cabinet. Castillo’s performance was so punishingly awe-inspiring that, for one song, Homme was no longer the star of the show.

Forget toasting the audience—the King of the Queens should have finished the night by buying a couple of shots for the animal behind the kit.