Politically Correct Križanke with Punčke and the “Queens” (2014)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Location: Ljubljana / Križanke / Slovenia
Concert date: 09.06.2014
Attendance: 3400
Ticket price: €35.00

A surprisingly civilized bunch of fans in a sold-out Križanke calmly took their seats as the evening got going. A good sign, since all too often, before, during and after a gig, some »playful« individuals go out of their way to wreck an otherwise excellent performance on stage. In that aforementioned »discipline«, the crowd sat down to wait for the support act in Ljubljana’s Križanke.

When Punčke came on, the crowd got to its feet and welcomed the Croatian trio with warm applause. Whatever prejudices might come up around all-female trios, Punčke blew them away within the first few hits of their set. They took on the Queens of The Stone Age-hungry Križanke with a sinewy, punchy attack and left their mark on the stage. Their set was mostly defined by the doggedness of post-punk/noise bands, far from anything gentle or feminine. At the same time, some songs brushed up against the edges of the early English indie era: racing riffs with wild drums and dancey bass lines, a great recipe for drumming along on your knees. The wiry rhythm section wove a solid foundation for the vocal and guitar lines, which could have used a good dose of distortion. Now and then some parts sounded monotonous and pedantic, and the lead guitarist/vocalist tried to make up for it with slightly forced moves and facial expressions. But the moments when the band locked into a magically balanced whole definitely got the blood pumping.

After a short hello and the stage going dark, the crowd in Križanke was already impatiently waiting for the main course of the muggy evening. The whistling started as soon as the tech crew came on stage, and the crowd went nuts when the headliners appeared. The countdown on the LCD screens on stage sent adrenal glands into a full-on delirium. You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar,bu t I Feel Like a Millionaire started out a little shaky, both on stage and in the sound. Queens of The Stone Age made up for the slower start with No One Knows and then the newer burner My God Is The Sun, where the band on stage finally found its footing and shifted the machine into a higher gear. Just the right amount of lag in the guitar riffs added that extra bit of flavor to an already great picture on a warm Ljubljana evening. Sadly, the catharsis, the peak of My God Is The Sun, got lost in the sound booming out of the PA. The snare drum literally leapt out of the speakers and beat on the sweaty crowd. The guitars lacked the definition you’d expect at a venue like Križanke, so the nuances of the improvisation got lost in the louder parts. Sure, it burned, and it seemed like the most hardcore fans wanted more. Queens of the Stone Age gladly served those in the front rows; the first part of the set was a well-balanced list of older and newer cuts, just the right dose of new and old. The »drag queens« (queen-transvestites) raced through Smooth Sailing, Feel Good Hit of the Summer and In My Head to the cooldown at …Like Clockwork. Despite the early hiccups, the band found its groove and drove all the way to the calmer moment with a drive that didn’t exactly feel nostalgic, but radiated a more »refined« quality. After …Like Clockwork came a few more precious offerings, and here the stamina and precision of QoTSA deserve special praise. Homme’s moves, Van Leeuwen’s charisma, Schuman’s aggression, Fertita’s precision and Theodore’s sinewiness: all of it melted in a storm of sweat, spit and furious flailing into one packed performance. So what if the tech smeared the sound a little. The connection between Križanke and the band was palpable. The crowd didn’t just sing the lyrics, but the riffs too, like in Burn The Witch, the dark countdown from Lullabies to Paralyze. Improvisation and tension drove the QoTSA show to its very peak with Go With The Flow. After coming back on stage, and the obligatory setting up of the keyboards for Vampyre of Time and Memory, a song where Fertita never fails with that first twisted note on the guitar after the first verse, Queens of The Stone Age wrung out the last drops of sweat with 3’s & 7’s and A Song For The Dead, where the barriers both on stage and behind the mixing desk gave way, and the show ended with a thunderous roar of applause.

As the crowd drained out of Križanke, a bit of fresh air blew across the grounds and sobered up the picture of the past few hours. Despite the technical minuses (the smeared sound) and the slip-ups during the show (Theodore at the transition from verse to chorus in Burn The Witch), the gig left a solid impression on Ljubljana. We can »whine« and pine for nostalgia, but the »more refined« version of Queens of The Stone Age has its own special sides too. The improvisational confidence (like in Better Living Through Chemistry) hits its own special peak with the current lineup, just like their particular approach to performing live. Gig of the decade? Hard to say, but what stays with you from Križanke is the image of the blazing sun, the stuffy heat, and the sound of Go With The Flow on an old-school radio. From that angle, the gig was a hell of a success.