![\"Foo](\"https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/edmontonjournal/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/0918-you-foofighters-3.jpg\" "\\"Foo")
The best, the best rock show Commonwealth Stadium’s seen this year , Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age would’ve blown the roof off if there was one. But not even the clouds dared show in the otherwise soggiest summer on record, save for the north-fleeing smoke of the fireworks at the end.
Kicking off with All My Life, Dave Grohl was a pitch-perfect rock wizard for an almost three hour headliner set, indeed calling himself Gandalf the Grey and, looking out at 44,000 fans, noting, “It’s like Lord of the Rings! There’s a lot of people!” presumably referring to the opening battle where Sauron played golf with the armies massed against him.
This master of upbeat radio rock who wisely took a left turn from being just someone else’s drummer certainly saluted his own ghosts onstage – especially later on when the band members played songs from their earlier outfits – but the entire night felt so wonderfully in the now, if happily haunted, so let’s dive in.
Starting with Mannequin Pussy’s last night of its first-ever stadium tour, bra-topped spitfire Marisa Dabice went from indie pop birdsong to total punk rage screams in an incredible set, bass player Colins Regisford jumping in on vocals in the afternoon set. Highlight was Dabice flipping off “f—ing pedophile f—ing losers” trying to divide us, making it pretty clear the entire night would need a language warning once Josh Homme and Grohl got talking.
Seek out their last two songs OK? OK! OK? OK! and Loud Bark, will ya?
Notoriously snarly, at 6:30 p.m. for an hour Queens of the Stone Age’s singer Homme was all smiles and gratitude in his banter, though they switched up their tour set for Edmonton, kicking off with wall-of-noise Run, Pig, Run instead of that smooth glass of rock perfection Regular John they’ve been leading with.
The gum-chewy, bouncy Smooth Sailing was next, but the first real beaut was the beautifully mournful In the Fade with its long “live til you die” lonely-meow of a chorus. The epic and dizzying My God Is the Sun led into …Like Clockwork’s pop-rock masterpiece I Sat by the Ocean, first time I was howling along, vainly praying they’d drop If I Had a Tail like in Toronto, but still elated.
Little Sister was the first one that had, like, everyone yelping along, Homme lighting a cigarette for an extended Make It Wit Chu, where he asked us to fill him with energy by singing the chorus back at him.
“It’s Saturday night, you ready to sing? Wait,” he laughed on this Thursday night, “what day is it? Who f—in’ cares! F– the calendar! No one’s going to work tomorrow, we’re all calling in sick!”
More on this hangover vibe with the Foos, but after the piano-driven Tasmanian Devil Go with the Flow, Homme went so far as to apologize for calling in sick to the April 2024 show.
Then it was the slinky cat No One Knows, the giant video feed rather perfectly simulating melty mushroom-trip tracers. Attacking the calendar aside, this was the first time I saw Homme, all the way back to Vancouver’s tiny Starfish Room in May 2000, not pick a fight with an audience member. Though…
“Edmonton is a terrible audience,” Homme joked coming out on the thrust stage, “thank you very much!” before capping the set with Song for the Dead, on which recording Grohl was indeed drummer, if you want some connective tissue.
![\"](\"https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/edmontonjournal/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/0918-you-foofighters-5.jpg\" "\\"")
OK! Foos! With a giant spiderweb curtain of programmable lights and nine trapezoidal floating light panels that would do incredible things later on, this band of rock and roll refugees with, you know, Nirvana’s drummer as its singer went from 8 p.m. to a babysitter-cash-cow 10:50 p.m. with either 25 or 30 songs, it would take apart the coolest medley I’ve ever seen.
“Do you like rock and roll music? That’s our specialty!” Grohl said after The Pretender, then noting this was the band’s biggest Edmonton crowd ever seen. They played Regina Tuesday, PS, which was the city’s first major stadium concert in seven years, just in case you don’t think we have it pretty good here.
Back to the hit machine, Times Like These and the massively screamed-to My Hero played on either side of yelly Rope and Stacked Actors, and it’s here Grohl really summoned Robert Plant under that big, seaweed mop of curls, laughing how he probably needs a haircut soon.
Lookin’ for a place to drop the soaring Learn to Fly, he found it next, just such upbeat and lovely radio rock song to fall in love to, first hearing the Foos, after all, post-you-know-who were not unlike dating someone new, some 31 years back.
“What a beautiful f—ing night to have a stadium show,” Grohl swore, flanked by guitarists Chris Shiflet and the ever-grinning Pat Smear. “I f—ing love it when you guys sing along. How often do you get 44,000 people in one place, agreeing on the same thing?
“Kids, your parents used to be cool,” the 57-year-old joy boy continued. “Let me take that back – they’re still cool!” Well, that got about the loudest crowd roar of the night, didn’t it? And indeed, there were numerous little scenes of parents and kids banging their heads in unison throughout the three acts.
Sun fading, These Days brought out the phone constellations for this lovely consideration of mortality, Grohl effortlessly shrieking through Walk, the awesome This Is the Call leading into an Ace of Spades-laden No Son of Mine, which also echoed DEVO’s “Are we not men?”
He even sang horny anthem Closing Time for a sec out on the trust stage going acoustic for Wheels.
After this, Grohl talked about quietly writing his own songs in an apartment he shared with Kurt Cobain, long before this band lived longer than Kurt’s entire 27 years by four. “He went to sleep in his room,” Grohl laughed. “I didn’t want to wake up my new singer guy.”
After Marigold, which he released under the name Late! in ’92, Grohl lamented his current hangover and dedicated Big Me to Nick the Fernet “overserver” at Braven in the Marriott, an unspeakably cool cap feather, then played the sweet Valentine Under You solo.
“I’ve been married to five men for 30 years and I still love them very much,” he laughed.
It was back to the main stage for rock shrieker La Dee Da, and the ballady, then hard, almost industrial Run, which in a lot of ways was the best pure “song” of the set.
This was followed by that incredible medley, where every band member played a bit of their former stage lives, including Grohl singing – whoa – the Wallflowers’ One Headlight for keyboard player Rami Jaffee, and for Pat Smear The Germ’s punk freakout, Manimal.
Responding “Nope!” to wanting to do a song from his previous band Nine Inch Nails, insanely tight drummer Ilan Rubin and Grohl switched spots for a heavy metal instrumental where the former proved he’s also an insanely good guitarist.
All this, one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen at Commonwealth, and that includes a giant glass spider ride after Duran Duran.
Monkey Wrench had the Guitar Hero fans tapping the air. Window brought a little boogie into the bowl. And after Breakout, the hovering panels formed a big bird in the purple and green light, this one dedicated to their late drummer Taylor Hawkins, gone four years now.
The pure, inspirational lion roar of an extended The Best turned up the staccato light show, which brought us to the encore break.
Returning, Grohl noted that SNFU came from these parts – so weird to think of the ghost of Ken Chinn sitting at the phantom Empress by himself hearing this shoutout from our messy world – Grohl smiling, “I’ve slept on that dirty floor, too, man. They were the band that you didn’t want to go on after.”
But here we are, all going on, without our Kurts and Taylors and Chi Pigs, and all the names that sometimes make you cry alone in the night out of the blue.
The early-days Exhausted led to that shining, ethereal diamond Everlong, red and sparkly gold fireworks firing left and right over colossal cement wings full of beaming fans who, indeed, agreed.
This one was for the ages.
Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know — add EdmontonJournal.com and EdmontonSun.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.
You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal | The Edmonton Sun.
","slug":"concert-review-foo-fighters-and-queens-of-the-stone-age-ablaze-at-commonwealth-stadium","publicPath":"/news/2026-09-18-concert-review-foo-fighters-and-queens-of-the-stone-age-ablaze-at-commonwealth-stadium"}}