Beloved desert rockers Kyuss left an esteemed catalog, but things didn’t exactly end on the greatest of terms. After first disbanding in 1995, vocalist John Garcia, guitarist/bassist Nick Oliveri and drummer Brant Bjork would go on to revive the band as Kyuss Lives! around 15 years afterwards.
However, a 2012 legal dispute over the Kyuss trademark between current members of the revival band and former members of Kyuss themselves put an end to those activities. That legal battle found ex-members Josh Homme and Scott Reeder on one side and Garcia and Bjork on the other.
After Kyuss came to a close, Homme of course went on to find fame fronting gold-certified alternative rockers Queens Of The Stone Age, and back in 2020 revealed he had pondered the idea of getting Kyuss back together for a show, even though he did find it conflicting with some his beliefs. He said of that at the time:
“My philosophy has always been, never do a reunion, never do a sequel. It’s not what it was; it’s what it is. And that’s kind of how I’ve felt. A legacy that involves having been at the epicenter of a scene that got created, it’s so fragile; it’s like an ice sculpture. And I don’t wanna be a blow dryer on that thing. That being said, I was in full support of Kyuss Lives! and I would go to the shows and I told them as much, until what Brant and, unfortunately, what John tried to do. And that was terrible.”
Five years on, Homme has once again spoken about the possibility of a proper Kyuss reunion. Talking to Kyuss World, Homme offered:
“I know I thought about it many times… I think about it. I’ve actually talked about it a few times to people that help me do stuff. I don’t know. I just feel like the punctuation of Kyuss — it was such a perfect little unit, and it ended the way it should. And I was totally in support of what was happening in Kyuss Lives! and things like that. It was just [that] there were some tricky things that were pulled… I think it’s good for people to know what happened. But it always left me with a strange feeling, because it’s, like, you wanna set things right. And plus I just don’t think it’s good… There’s no reason to hold on to anything negative. I don’t have negative feelings about anybody. None of that stuff matters. So, yeah, it’s possible.”
As Homme explained back in 2020, the nature of his dispute with his ex-bandmates wasn’t their continued performances under the Kyuss Lives! banner, but rather an allegedly underhanded attempt by Garcia and Bjork to gain control of the Kyuss trademarks.
