FIRE AND ICE: Denis Leary takes a break from The Job to lace ’em up once again for his third annual Celebrity Hat Trick all-star ice capades, which will pit Hollywood rink rats against Bruins alums at the Worcester Centrum on the afternoon of September 29. Proceeds from the game, as well as from a private dinner and golf tournament, will benefit the Leary Firefighters Foundation, which was established in the wake of the 1999 Worcester warehouse fire that claimed the lives of six firefighters, including Leary’s cousin and a childhood friend. (Last year, the foundation’s scope was expanded to include the families of NYC firefighters who perished in the World Trade Center attacks.) This year’s Tinseltown roster includes Leary, Michael J. Fox, Bobby Farrelly, and Scott Wolf, with Stanley Cup champ Cam Neely in the role of chief ringer, and bench management by Elizabeth Hurley and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler. The Bruins will field Phil Esposito, John Bucyk, and Rick Middleton, with Bobby Orr, Derek Sanderson, and famed Cheers sudsman George Wendt serving in a coaching capacity. Tickets are $15 to $40; call (617) 931-2000, or visit www.learyfirefighters.org for more info.

AFTER THE GOLD RUSH: We were just getting used to the notion that Ryan Adams — the former Whiskeytown leader who’d bowled us over with his solo debut, Heartbreaker — had become a massive disappointment. The evidence? A lackluster rock album, Gold (Lost Highway), followed by a screw-you tour that wasted a crack band on obsequious ’70s-rock clichŽs. It was enough to make us wish he’d just bitten the bullet and made another Heartbreaker. Turns out he did. Demolition (also Lost Highway), due out September 24, is culled from live-in-the-studio demos he recorded in 2000 and 2001 — and far from sounding like Gold outtakes, it reveals an evolution of his debut’s smoldering style, with its stripped-down, no-frills arrangements. Screw-you attitude or not, he’ll have a new suitcase of superb songs when he hits the Orpheum, 1 Hamilton Place, on October 8. Call (617) 931-2000.

NEXT WEEKEND:

Queens of the Stone Age

Queens of the Stone Age singer/guitarist Josh Homme is at a rehearsal studio in LA, mulling over the latest change in the band’s constantly evolving line-up. Dave Grohl, who recently toured with Queens and played drums on their eagerly awaited new album, Songs for the Deaf (Interscope), has gone back to Foo Fighting. Which means Homme and company are without a drummer on the eve of their upcoming US tour, which hits Avalon next Sunday.

So who’s the newest Queen? "We don’t even know yet, to be honest," says Homme. "We always knew Dave was gonna split, but we didn’t know he was gonna split right when he did. For us, it’s kinda casual — everything’s still gonna rock. We just gotta practice an extra two days now."

On Songs for the Deaf, Homme and bassist/singer Nick Oliveri have assembled their most outlandish cast of characters to date, including Grohl, Mark Lanegan, and Dean Ween, plus various members of A Perfect Circle, Eleven, and Dwarves. The results are more adrenaline-crazed than spacy, especially compared with the band’s previous album, Rated R (Interscope).

"There was a lot more dark shit happening to Nick and me," Homme explains. "People leaving and dying and stuff like that. So everything was much more razor-sharp, like we were cutting teeth all the time. I don’t think it’s depressing, because it’s like, ‘Man, there’s gotta be a way out of here.’ But also, it’s kinda like, ‘Maybe the way out of here is to break through this wall.’ "

The band break through their share of walls on the disc’s first single, "No One Knows," but they also take inspiration from a gentler source — the original stoner rockers, the Beatles. "I write songs around beats," says Homme. "I get obsessed with beats and write five or six tunes that are versions of the same beat. The beat on ‘No One Knows’ is one the Beatles used all the time, like on ‘A Day in the Life.’ " Which explains the string section that pops up near the end of the song. "Originally, there were more strings than that, which didn’t make me happy. I like to record one set of good strings. Let’s not triple them or quadruple them. It can’t sound like that fuckin’ [Metallica arranger] Michael Kamen dork, you know?"

Songs for the Deaf is punctuated with a series of mock radio voiceovers, an idea that originated in a series of road trips Homme took in the vicinity of his native Southern California. "I would do these long drives to Phoenix, and the radio would just be on for a while, and then for a certain portion it doesn’t exist anymore. All you could get was religious stations. So where it wouldn’t exist, I would just sing our songs. A couple years later, now that we’re doing this record, it just reminded me of that time. Because there’s three singers and the songs are very schizophrenic, there needed to be some way to stitch it all together to make sense. And it really almost sounded like our version of the radio."

Despite the speculation of many reviewers, Homme maintains that the voiceovers are not an indictment of rock radio, where the heavily hyped Rated R stalled. "I sold more records than I’ve ever sold in my life. I thought it could have done more, but I’m happy with whatever it does. That’s the part I have no control over."

Queens of the Stone Age perform next Sunday, September 1, at Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street. Call (617) 423-NEXT.

BY SEAN RICHARDSON