'Royal Blood' - Album Review

Approaching something with a mind-set can be both good and bad. Especially when you have had a good part of the experience in advance (In this case, four of the ten songs). 'Royal Blood', a heavy rock duo from West Sussex manage to stand aside from other 2-piece bands that can fall into their ball-park. The main difference here is that front-man Mike Kerr swaps a guitar for a two-way octave fuzzed up Bass Guitar two accompany band-mate Ben Thatchers hard-hitting drums. As well as that, most other rock duo's tend to side with Blues or Indie like The White Stripes, The Black Keys and Blood Red Shoes, but Royal Blood are without doubt, straight up heavy rock.

“Melt my face off!”

That was my mind-set when delving into Royal Bloods self-titled, number one debut album. A band that pride themselves on gnarly riffs and heavy drums, should, over the 32 or so minutes in which they have my attention, do this very thing.

So have they succeeded in doing so?

Well…

The opening track ‘Out of the Black’ starts the album off in this way. Singer/Bass guitarist Mike Kerr’s opening, muted riff, coinciding with drummer Ben Thatcher’s parallel striking, before exploding the track into life, sets the president for the albums ingredients. Unfortunately though, the album reaches its lyrical peak here with the menacingly confrontational lines, “Don’t breathe when I talk, ‘cause you haven’t been spoken too.” Followed by, “I've got a gun for a mouth and a bullet with your name on it”. What’s more, the breakdown at the end of the track is equally as confrontational, only this time, musically. The bass solo, built up by the drums, exploding the song back into life again, displays the clear instrumental talent from this heavy rock duo.

This track truly did melt my face off!

However this is as exciting as it gets until the halfway point.

The following track “Come on Over” isn’t just lyrically vague. A story about god interfering in a relationship “There’s no God and I don’t really care.” Combined with Kerr suggesting, “Let’s run away, get out of here.” In the same narrative seems as if he is just throwing out random scenarios. This under-pinned by how much the track seems to be a diluted version of the previous track, doesn’t move this journey forward.

This did not melt my face off.

Furthermore, the next three tracks fall under my, “meh.” category. This stems mainly from the focus on riffs turning the progression of the song-writing into a secondary process with Royal Blood starting the songs with a riff, moseying along a bland melody, and then hastily getting back to the initial riff. This is evident with ‘You can be so Cruel’ and ‘Figure it Out’. Both tracks only seem to go anywhere interesting towards the end when Kerr decides to break into a jam session-like solo and try and melt my face off.

Only momentarily do two of these three tracks bring a mild sweat to my forehead.

Furthermore, none of these tracks go anywhere lyrically. For a band that sight ‘Jeff Buckley’ as an influence you would think, narrative would play a major part in their make-up. Not that you would expect a singer to deliver as spine-tingling a range of vocals to the table. However, the way in which Buckley, like his father Tim would build a story and take the listener on a journey seems to have been lost on Royal Blood. Vague lyrics such as “All the glitters is gold” (stolen from ‘Led Zeppelins’ 'Stairway to Heaven) off of track 7 ‘Loose Change’ and “Cut loose like an animal fired out like a cannonball” in ‘Ten Tonne Skeleton’ make the group seem far too much like a cliché. Lines like these in my opinion don’t possess the power of a lyric such as, “That dark angel he is shuffling in, watching over them with his black, leather wings unfurled”. (Jeff Buckley – “Dream Brother”). Descriptions that try and amount to this fall short of the mark, and are a dime a dozen as well.

The second side of the album starts much like the first. ‘Little Monster’ offers up a blood curdling amount of distortion and heaviness from the very first slide down Kerr’s two-way octave driven bass. The riff conjures up a platform for the rhythm of Ben Thatcher’s heavy-hitting drums to move the song along, before exploding into a rip-roaring chorus which swirls around your head as drum fills and riffs match together perfectly before repeating the cycle. Much like ‘Out of the Black’, the song breaks down into a bass guitar solo which is then built up via a drum solo before ripping back into a chorus followed by a part drum fill, part solo. Melodically, this is how Royal Blood best build a song around a riff.

This song took me on a journey.

This song succeeded in melting my face off!

Aforementioned lyrical cliché’s ‘Loose Change’ and ‘Ten Tonne Skeleton’ carry on the trend of an idea getting in the way of song progressing. Both songs again, displaying solid riff work, ‘Loose Change’ being the most low-fi on the album and ‘TTS’ providing a different change in guitar tone, but amounting to no more than two more album fillers.

Either side of these tracks however, showcases where Royal Blood impress. ‘Careless’ has Mike spitting venom at the subject who he can’t stop thinking about yet they “couldn’t care less”. The wailing guitar sounds spin round and take off twice before combining the only backing vocals that come to the fore on the album, contained in the bridge.

This song did not melt my face, but the song-writing meant it didn’t have to.

"Finally!" ...we get to the albums masterpiece.

‘Better Strangers’ is the track in which most of this album should have resembled.

The layering of distorted bass guitar over a normal rock-steady bass line on this track is like nothing else on the whole album, and conjures up an anthemic behemoth. The heavy, head banging riff, morphing into the melodic chorus is like something Queens of the Stone Age would have done on their last album, ‘…Like Clockwork’. Kerr’s soloing on this track is fuzz heaven and once more, displays his work In this regard, to be a strong point no matter what type of song in which it appears.

This track took me on a journey.

This track made me feel as if this band can produce the most exciting heavy rock music of this generation.

This track, every time, has and will, Melt my face off!

Going into this album, riffs, fuzz and heaviness were the main attraction. But in conjunction with that, Royal Blood’s supposed best friend also becomes their worst enemy. Bringing forth “face melting” riffs also brings forth unfinished tracks that don’t seem to get off the ground. I am left however with the sense that this band can grow, and am anticipating already, the various ways in which they aim to melt my face off more.

‘Royal Blood’ – Mixed Bag