60. Royal Blood

Rough Trade East

26 August 2014

Two blokes. One drum kit. One bass guitar. And yet, somehow, this Brighton duo manage to summon an ungodly racket so immense it could probably knock satellites out of orbit. The bass alone, so cranked, distorted, and twisted into new dimensions, demands a pedalboard setup so secretive that it rivals Colonel Sanders favourite chicken. I’d heard one track via streaming, so the chance to witness firsthand whether these lads could summon Cthulhu with their shamanistic rock riffs was an opportunity I wasn’t about to pass up.

And so, here I was, wedged into Rough Trade East among a ragtag bunch of thirty-odd punters, when something happened. It wasn’t just a gig; it was a sonic mugging. The opening blast of Ten Tonne Skeleton erupted like an amplifier-induced car crash, slamming out of the speaker stacks with such ferocity I half-expected the scientists at LIGO to register a gravitational wave event.

They tore through the album like men possessed: “Little Monster”, “Figure It Out”, “Better Strangers”, “Loose Change”, each track hitting harder than the last. By the time “Out of the Black” brought things to a howling, feral close, we were all unceremoniously spat out of the sonic tornado, battered, breathless, and dumped in a heap by the CD racks, wondering what the hell had just happened.

The meet-and-greet afterward felt like a post-battle debrief. Shell-shocked nods were exchanged, album covers were signed with the shaky hands of survivors, and then we stumbled out into the pale glow of an August evening, our ears ringing, our souls slightly scorched.

Bloody hell.