Relentless rhythms from rock royalty Queens Of The Stone Age wowed crowds of 45,000 at a sun-baked Finsbury Park.
From the chunky opening chords of Do It Again, the band set the tones for a driving headline set, stretching to nearly two hours, by which time the sun had long set.
After curating a festival which included virtuoso Swedish rockers The Hives, hip-hop duo Run The Jewels and Iggy Pop, Queens’ frontman Josh Homme vowed to give the crowd a night to remember on Saturday.
The gig – which fell on bassist Michael “Mickey Shoes” Shuman’s 31st birthday, prompting the crowd to sing him Happy Birthday – was inspired by album Villains, but sampled liberally from their extensive back catalogue.
After the opening number, the band launched into staples The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret and Go With The Flow, with Homme delivering the set-list in towering voice with trademark lip-curls, shimmies, and verve.
The bass notes of Burn The Witch, segued into the punchy chords of You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire, as the crowd lapped up the lyric “gimme some more”.
The audience then belted out No One Knows, as Homme told them: “Louder, sing it for me. I love you all. Sing it.”
As he crooned Make It Wit Chu, against the back-lit red stage, the refrain of the chorus rose across the park, with the set-list wrapping up with A Song For The Dead.
Earlier, Black Honey, Deap Valley and Miles Cane had performed on the main stage.
Frontman of The Hives’ Per Almqvist sang and entertained in equal measure, dunking his head in a water barrel mid-song, to stave off the heat, with the Swede quipping about Brexit: “Do you hate Brexit. We are from Europe – how do you like us now?”
Run The Jewels, offering up “good old Brooklyn and Atlanta savagery”, had the crowd bouncing along with the duo’s energy-filled set.
Iggy Pop, who opened with I Wanna Be Your Dog, and, bare-chested, played crowd-pleasers like The Passenger, finished up by flinging his mic stand across stage.
