Tone library / Queens of the stone age / The evil has landed

The evil has landed amp settings — Boss Katana 50 MkII

The Queens of the stone age guitar tone for “The evil has landed”, dialed in for a Boss Katana 50 MkII with a Manson Mbm 1. Studio version, Villains (2017) — Mark Ronson produced

Original rig

Ampeg VT-22 or V4 head, Ovation GP preamp, Fulltone OCD, various fuzzes, Maton BB1200 or Gretsch hollowbody with humbuckers

Thick, grinding fuzz-rock with scooped lows, aggressive upper-mids, and sustained harmonic saturation — trademark desert rock wall-of-sound

Amp settings — Boss Katana 50 MkII

CHANNELBrown amp type — this emulates the saturated, compressed midrange of Homme's overdriven Ampeg circuitBRIGHToffBOOSTon

Knob	Setting (0–10)
Gain	7
Bass	6
Mid	7
Treble	5
Presence	4
Reverb	0
Master	8

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Guitar

PICKUPbridge TONE7 VOLUME10

Signal chain

01Katana Booster (internal — accessed via Tone Studio)

Use the Blues Driver or Clean Boost model in Tone Studio to push the Brown channel — this mimics the OCD-into-Ampeg stack

Drive 4 · Bottom 6 · Tone 5 · Level 7

Why these settings

The Katana's Brown channel nails the compressed, harmonically saturated midrange of Homme's Ampeg platform. Your Manson MBM-1 with its hot humbuckers will push the input harder than Homme's Maton, so gain stays at 7 rather than maxed. Mid at 7 compensates for the Katana's slightly scooped Brown voicing vs the Ampeg's naturally forward mids. Presence pulled to 4 to avoid fizz — Homme's tone is dark and grinding, not bright.

PRO TIPHomme picks extremely hard with a thick pick right over the bridge pickup pole pieces — this attack is 50% of the QOTSA grind. Dig in aggressively and let the notes bloom into feedback on sustained chords.

Get this tone on your amp

These settings are for a Boss Katana 50 MkII. ToneAdapt matches any song to whatever amp, guitar and pedals you own — first match is free.

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Song, artist and gear names are used to identify the tone being matched; ToneAdapt is not affiliated with or endorsed by the artists or manufacturers mentioned. Settings are AI-generated starting points — trust your ears.