After a very public divorce and custody fight, Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme has quietly gone through a cancer battle.

Speaking with Revolver, the American rocker confirmed he underwent surgery following a cancer diagnosis last year. He’s said to be recovering from the operation.

“I never say it can’t get any worse. I never say that, and I wouldn’t advise it. But I do say it can get better,” he comments, without sharing further details on his illness.

“Cancer is just the cherry on top of an interesting time period, you know? I’m extremely thankful that I’ll get through this, and I’ll look back at this as something that’s fucked up — but will have made me better. I’m cool with that. There’s a lot of stuff I want to do. And there’s a lot of people I want to do that with.”

That “interesting time period” he refers to is a dry assessment of his breakup from the Distillers’ singer Brody Dalle in 2019, which has seen both sides file domestic violence restraining orders, and an ongoing custody battle which, due to their profiles, attracts global media attention. And prior to that, he caught flak when video emerged of him kicking a photographer at a KROQ Acoustic Christmas show, an incident he repeatedly apologized for.

Those dramas fed into the creative process for QOTSA’s forthcoming new album In Times New Roman. “I think this is the first time I didn’t want to make a record, but I was dealing with a lot of stuff in my personal life,” Homme adds. “We recorded a lot of stuff. I think I was doing it because when I’m in trouble, this is what I do. This is where I go to get right.”

The band’s eighth and latest full-length studio album is due out June 16 via Matador Records, and features the newly-released cut “Carnavoyeur” (stream below). In Times New Roman was recorded by the lineup of Homme, Troy Van Leeuwen, Dean Fertita, Michael Shuman and Jon Theodore, and will be supported by a major tour dubbed, The End is Nero, slated to kick off Aug. 3. It’s the followup to 2017’s Villains, which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200.