If there’s one thing we love in our team, it’s seeing personal bets flourish. That band we vibed with fifty, a hundred other people in a small room? Now they play to thousands, and we? We’re there, proud to have met them before everyone else. Call us hipsters, we are fine with it. But we are even happier to share with you this little taste and that X, Y, Z band that will make your day and eventually mark a generation.
And today is one of those days.
If we were told in 2014 that a small band from Brighton were going to be giants, we probably doubted as much. But then we listened to it. And on first listen, we got the same notion that it could explode – and that it didn’t even make sense to play in a venue, in Lisbon, that is now a restaurant (TMN ao Vivo, Armazém F, in Cais do Sodré).
Due to the great demand, the concert ended up being postponed to 2015 and transferred to the most incredible venue in the Portuguese capital: the Coliseu de Lisboa.
At the time the first album had come out. It went hand in hand with the band’s name, so it was easy to memorize: Royal Blood presenting…Royal Blood.
It was an easy record to get along, with Figure It Out, Little Monster or Out of the Black sticking to our mind. The concert, that one, had a bassist and a drummer on stage, embodied by Mike Kerr and Bem Thatcher. The symbiosis was perfect – with an atmosphere bordering on perfection. The concert was small, with 45 minutes of pure rock n’roll, reminiscent of tremendous bands like Foo Fighters, Muse, or Queens of the Stone Age to the fore.
But they needed more. And three years later, they increased their membership, which resulted in the always incredible How Did We Get So Dark?, a more raw hour for Royal Blood. Its lead single, Lights Out, promised a mosh pit like that. And it delivered.
Four years later, it’s time to add a few touches to the initial formula. And it’s with this motto that we talk about the third album of originals.
Typhoons
Is it possible to mix Rock with the dance floor? Absolutely. And like a pure hurricane, Typhoons is just that: an anthem to everything we always dreamed that it was impossible to do.
Trouble’s Coming, the first song and single from this stretch already fantasize this version of the Brighton band. Groovy rock, allowing the possibility to get a foot off the ground on any dance floor. It was included in the most famous football videogame in the world, FIFA 21. And even then we could notice Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, or Neymar swaying to the sound of the song.
In Oblivion we’re left with a hovering idea of pure, hard rock. And with a total feeling of nostalgia, where we are immediately reminded of Muse – and how this could have been a song made by them had they continued with the same sound over all these years.
We move on to Typhoons, which starts as a real hurricane, with Mike’s voice plotting through the air, like a hard breeze. And then, out of the blue, comes that unique style that just makes you want to go running and buy a ticket for one of the band’s concerts. Damn you, COVID-19.
Who Needs Friends, that question you shouldn’t even be asking. But in a rough way, it feels like we’ve returned to the Brighton band’s 2014 base. With a style, so theirs we can tell from a distance.
Million and One, one of the band’s most introspective songs on this record, with a calmer, more thoughtful pace, shows that rock can also be reflective, with plenty of glamour in the mix.
Limbo makes Josh Homme and his cronies blush. Pure, hard rock. The kind that puts a huge ringing in your ears.
And continuing on the intoned from above if there was still The Desert Sessions, Either You Want It could certainly have been put together there. We feel a breeze of Make It Wit Chu in the air.
Boilermaker may have a fixed electrifying rhythm, but it is indeed one of those songs that will be timeless. With the Royal Blood imprint always to the fore, certainly.
Heading towards the end there’s still time to dance to Mad Visions, Hold On and, at the same time, see a different version of the band on the last song of the record, All We Have Is Now. We don’t expect the end of the world now, but this, for better or for worse, could be the soundtrack to that moment.
From Boys, they went on to be real Men, and that’s what Typhoons bring to our ears: a huge pride in seeing an indie-rock band from Brighton grow to a point of total World domination. And the musical maturity is there for all to see, but with a touch of Fish and Chips always in mind, of course.
More on Royal Blood:
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