Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme Reveals He Had Surgery to Remove Cancer

Josh Homme is counting his blessings. In a new interview with Revolver magazine, published Monday, the Queens of the Stone Age guitarist revealed that he had been diagnosed with cancer last year, and that surgery to remove it had been “successful.”

“I never say it can’t get any worse. I never say that, and I wouldn’t advise it. But I do say it can get better,” he said, telling the outlet that he “gets the occasional twinge of pain” following the diagnosis. “Cancer is just the cherry on top of an interesting time period, you know? I’m extremely thankful that I’ll get through this, and I’ll look back at this as something that’s fucked up — but will have made me better.”

“I’m cool with that. There’s a lot of stuff I want to do,” he added. “And there’s a lot of people I want to do that with.”

It’s unclear what type of cancer Homme battled. A rep for Homme did not immediately return Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.

Homme spoke about the diagnosis as he opened up about a tumultuous time in his life over the last several years, including the deaths of his friends Mark Lanegan and Taylor Hawkins, as well as a custody battle with his ex-wife Brody Dalle. (“I would never talk bad about the mother of my children. And I will not talk about my children,” he said about the custody situation.)

The interview with Revolver arrives a few days before the band is set to release 10-track LP In Times New Roman… on Friday. Among the songs on the LP are “Emotion Sickness” and “Carnavoyeur.” They’re also set to head on tour later this year. Their last album arrived in 2017 with Villains.

The band recorded and mixed the album at Homme’s Pink Duck Studios in Burbank, California, and added to it at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La studio in Malibu. The band produced In Times New Roman … while their longtime collaborator, Mark Rankin, engineered and mixed it.