Look beyond the hype and the ‘guitar music’ hopes pinned to their chest and Royal Blood’s debut record is gloriously direct. It is a primal beast; a muscular exercise in riffs and kit smashing.
The pair’s bass and drums attack offers a lovely opportunity to pun just as it aims for the pit of your stomach, with Michael Kerr’s often mystifying fretboard runs underpinned at every turn by Ben Thatcher, whose drumming performance feeds on an invigorating raw power approach.
There are plenty of blues influences dotted around the place, along with few Jack White melodies and the odd slow burn homage to Sabbath, but Royal Blood have a contemporary void to fill.
Since Muse disappeared up the black hole that it’s hardest to emerge from, rock fans have been deprived the sort of riffs that fuse technical ability with a satisfying adrenaline rush. There are bags of them here.
Out Of The Black, Come On Over and Ten Tonne Skeleton all tick that box in some style, while there are melodic delights on the brashly hook-filled Little Monster and Careless. The interplay between Kerr and Thatcher is never less than precise, with Figure It Out’s hi-hat-pounding bridge particularly enjoyable.
There are imperfections, of course, but many of them are commonplace among new bands. There are sludgy detours here and there that don’t serve the record’s overall momentum, for example, while your fix of thematic clout will have to be found elsewhere. There is clearly a depth of feeling to Kerr’s broken hearted laments, but we’ve heard a lot of it before.
Still, this is a full-throated roar of an album that has all the ingredients of becoming a breakout hit. The appetite for mainstream rock records that actually rock remains. This is a banquet.
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