Queens Of The Stone Age
On tour

Contrary to what one might expect, sex drugs and rock'n'roll is a hard blend to get exactly right. Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme, however, is one of the very few individuals who know the recipe. Steeped for most of his adult life in the hardest of rock bands - from stoner metal pioneers Kyuss to Seattle classicists Screaming Trees - Homme has seen the ridiculous extremes rock has to offer, but has, none the less, managed to retain a love for his medium. Smart enough to admit irony, but heartfelt enough not to let it rule, a yin and yang of wry intelligence and sleazy heaviness is duly part of what gives QOTSA's latest LP Era Vulgaris its unique character. It's rock of the most basic kind - but it takes a lot of brains to sound this stupid.

· Brighton Dome, Fri 23

The Heavy
On tour

If hip-hop introduced us to the dirty south, trip-hop acquainted us with the very stoned south west, and the paranoid interior monologues of its players. The Heavy - although from Noid near Bath in the south-west, and with roots in the downtempo world of blunted breaks - have, however, chosen to move things into the realm of physical rather than psychological heaviness. The kind of heavy rock album you might expect to be made by sometime crate-diggers, their debut Great Vengeance And Furious Fire is an interesting mix of some slightly dated elements - movie dialogue samples from the likes of Harvey Keitel for example - but also a surprisingly robust, old school take on psychedelic rock.

· Barfly, Cardiff, Sun 18; The Zodiac @ Oxford Academy, Tue 20; The Other Rooms, Newcastle upon Tyne, Wed 21; Cockpit, Leeds, Thu 22; Barfly, Liverpool, Fri 23