Queens of the Stone Age: European 'Catacombs Tour' posters 2025.

Hot on the heels of their critically acclaimed Alive In The Catacombs, QOTSA lit up the concert halls of Europe and North America and produced a silkscreened poster for every stop along the way. Let us tell you about how we printed for the European swing of the tour.

From a critically acclaimed live recording to a critically acclaimed tour.

"If you're ever going to be haunted, surrounded by several million dead people is the place. I've never felt so welcome in my life."

The words of Josh Homme, spoken in response to the realisation of his long-held dream to stage a QOTSA performance in the sprawling Catacombs below Paris. This auspicious event came into being in July 2024 and spawned an EP and concert film — Alive In The Catacombs — both released early in the summer of 2025. 

Only a few short months after the release of Alive In The Catacombs, the band took their project on the road, with concerts across Europe and North America in October and November. Fans lucky enough to attend have given rapturous reports of being treated to a one-of-a-kind QOTSA show, where the dark, atmospheric feel of the original performance has been meticulously transposed to the stage—an epic channelling of that session in the subterranean Catacombs of Paris.

Print, Process, and Collaboration.

A few weeks before QOTSA arrived in Europe, we spoke with the Bravado merchandising team about fulfilling an order for silkscreen-printed posters for the European swing of the tour. This was a very welcome call. While we've printed on and off for Bravado for years, this was the first opportunity to supply our silkscreen work for a string of dates, and we leapt at the chance to print for the almighty Queens Of The Stone Age. 

The requirement was for two posters per concert: a regular edition on white paper and a gold foil variant. Eight concerts in total, limited edition prints for every stop, and a unique artist working on each poster. Time was quite tight to turn around a project that required 42 individual silkscreens and almost as many unique colour formulations, but delivering exceptional screenprint to a deadline is our studio's modus operandi.

While the delivery of high-quality print is the tangible work that everybody sees, one of the most critical parts of the production process for us is the work that remains largely invisible to the fans who buy and covet the prints. You could generalise and call this work 'pre-press', but what we love specifically is the conversation we have with the client and artists. 

No two silkscreen prints are the same, and although the overall process of committing ink to paper is fairly standardised (to be good, it needs to be!), the nuances of one artwork versus another can be anything but. Our job is to include the artist from day one, understand their vision for their work, and help them understand how we will turn that vision into a physical print. It is gratifying work, not to mention essential before taking a project to the printing press. 

In this respect, we and Bravado share a vision: good working relationships, excellent communication, and a genuine passion for the craft deliver outstanding merchandise that stands the test of time. What starts with a conversation becomes a silkscreen-printed poster of collectable quality that faithfully delivers on the artist's vision and has fans hopping wild with excitement.

Making a silkscreen printed poster.

Of the 'Alive In The Catacombs' project, the band describe it as a distillation of QOTSA to its most elemental form. A series of stripped-down and intimate arrangements of their catalogue, with added strings and makeshift percussive instruments, where the steeped environment of the catacombs themselves brings a unique definition to the atmosphere and tone of the music.

With this richly imbued material to draw upon, a roster of fantastic artists was assembled by Bravado to create concert posters for every city on the tour: Milan, Paris (the band's muse), Basel, Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Antwerp, and finally London, where QOTSA played the inimitable Royal Albert Hall. 

With all artworks in hand, we tackled one at a time, working methodically to translate each into a series of screenprintable layers, all attuned to the way our print studio operates. Every studio has its own way of operating — invariably developed over many years of painstaking trial and error, and thousands of print projects — and ours is no exception. 

Despite the incredible skill and knowledge of screenprint that today's poster artists wield, we always spend time with their layering to make sure the poster we produce is solid and faithful in its balance of intended colour values and detail. Always to be found in the art is the artist's hand, and we'll be at pains to ensure this comes through in the final print. 

We're all fans.

Some bands have a fanbase that adores (and therefore demands!) a silkscreen-printed poster, and QOTSA is one such band. The Catacombs Tour — with its unabashedly intimate, emotion-jangling performances — really elevated the offering for its fans, featuring a robust roster of poster artists. These were: 

Milan by Nacho, Paris by Shian, Basel by Rodolfo Jofre, Berlin by Vance Kelly, Copenhagen by Ryan Richardson Pratt, Amsterdam by Maxx242, Antwerp by Daniel Mercer, and London RAH by Dido Peshev.

It was our great pleasure to work with these creatives, most of them for the first time, and to be able to deliver a series of posters that was so well received by the fans. 

We want to extend a huge THANK YOU to Kyle at Bravado USA for reaching out and allowing us to contribute our silkscreen printing to this tour. Also, special mentions to F4D Studios and Vahalla Studios for their support from afar (even if they didn't realise they were giving it).