YOU wouldn’t want to argue with Josh Homme. Standing 6’ 4” tall, clean-cut and a master of the dead-eyed stare, the 32-year-old singer and mainstay of Queens of the Stone Age has an air of imperturbable menace. At Koko on Tuesday night, he spotted a person in the crowd throwing a can onto the stage. Homme identified the culprit to those around him, before subjecting him to a barrage of icy, personal abuse. No further missiles were thrown at the stage.

Homme, who grew up in Palm Springs, California, has displayed a similar resolve in steering his group to their current position of pre-eminence in the volatile world of post-Nirvana rock’n’roll. Now on to their fourth album, Lullabies to Paralyze, the Queens have become a byword for everything that is classy and cool in a genre not noted for such qualities. Homme is the undisputed kingpin amid a gang of semi-detached group members and occasional guests, including Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters.

Grohl did not show up on Tuesday, and nor was there any sign of the group’s part-time singer Mark Lanegan. But there was no need for celebrity turns during an explosive show which emphasised the group’s core values in an unusually intimate setting.

Kicking off with a bullish combination of Go With the Flow and Feel Good Hit of the Summer, the band marched to a typically fast staccato beat. While the statuesque keyboard player Natasha Schneider provided a visual distraction, it was the muscular drumming of the bare-chested Joey Castillo and the guitar playing of the dark-suited Troy Van Leeuwen that provided the musical engine at the heart of the machine.

Mental instability was a recurring theme on newer numbers such as Everybody Knows that you are Insane and Medication, songs that Homme punched home in his uniquely sinister drawl while hammering out a distinctive patchwork of rhythm and lead guitar parts.

Strobes flashed, drums crashed and the tension was ratcheted up as the guitarists worked their way through a superb extended version of Avon. But there were more reflective moments too, as when Homme switched to bass for the bluesy Long Slow Goodbye.

A long, but constantly exciting and evolving show ended with In My Head and the urgent martial beat of No One Knows. A sometimes strange but always forceful encounter, they remain Queens of all they survey.

Queens of the Stone Age play at the Reading/Leeds Festivals on Fri/Sat

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