ROYAL BLOOD
Back To The Water Below (Warner)
If you didn’t know who Royal Blood were at the start of this year, maybe you heard them mentioned a few months ago after their infamous Radio 1 Big Weekend debacle in Dundee. Be it positive or negative, the event surely put more ears on the lads’ music, and with album number four they may have attracted a new audience.
To this day, it amazes me that two people are able to create such a sound with only a bass guitar and a drum kit. Vocalist and bassist Mike Kerr plays his instrument like it’s a lead guitar, while drummer Ben Thatcher keeps a mean beat and smashes the living daylights out of Back To The Water Below’s 10 songs. No real coming up for air here at all, a rollercoaster of an album with standouts The Firing Line, Triggers and High Water among a fine offering of thumping rock.
words OWEN SCOURFIELD