Royal Blood: Typhoons review – an innovating dance-rock revolution

Royal Blood have successfully carved out their own niche in this dynamic disco-infused collection of rock bangers that sound destined to soundtrack many post-lockdown workouts and dance parties the world over.

I could hardly contain myself when I first heard Trouble’s Coming, the lead single for Royal Blood’s third album, on a sunny inter-lockdown afternoon last September. I’ve been following them since their extraordinarily popular debut in 2014 – a self titled album which on paper seemed gimmicky (a two man rock band, essentially with just drums, vocals and bass riffs) but in practice was a thrilling novelty that made Royal Blood one of those rare modern rock bands with the fire power to climb up into the UK Top 40 alongside the biggest pop and hip hop stars. The sophomore album How Did We Get So Dark? addressed the fact that bass riffs and drums can only get you so far, dabbling with extra instrumentation such as the chilling backing vocals on that killer title track. Still, it was hard to see where the band could go from there whilst keeping faithful to the two-man formula that made them big in the first place.

Then I heard Trouble’s Coming. I had to pause and restart the song. Is this… disco? Funk? For one thing there’s that classic strings drone, and is Mike Kerr playing 3 on E? Don’t get me wrong, Kerr’s guitar has all the meaty distortion of any early Royal Blood thrasher, but the duo have definitely made a journey from mosh pit to dancefloor and the result is something beautiful.

The best part is that Trouble’s Coming isn’t the only piece of riffy dancefloor rock that Mike and Ben have up their sleeves. Swaggering Who Needs Friends simmers with falsetto; Boilermaker is driven by a drunken swung-quavers funk-rock groove; Million and One’s synthy intro doesn’t sound far off from a dancey ABBA single. It must be a particularly interesting change in style for drummer Ben Thatcher, who seems to have bitten his lip and held back from his highly technical heavy rock grooves that propelled classic tracks from the debut album like Figure It Out and Out of the Black, instead settling for more dancefloor-ready simplicity. That’s not to say his performance is underwhelming. Thumping album highlight Oblivion offers an opportunity for a suitably monstrous fill at its climax and Boilermaker provides a kick drum-heavy Thatcher groove unlike any we’ve heard before. I’m just left wishing he took a full solo to distract from that rather disjointed and awkward chorus vocal melody. 

Typhoons may have its fun, glitterball elements, but lyrically it’s almost uniformly pitch black. Who Needs Friends bites like a finely crafted insult, with Kerr lashing out at those closest to him, wondering “how can I make you stop calling?”. The track hints to the themes of alcoholism and self-destruction that have haunted previous Royal Blood releases, yet none more so than Typhoons. Kerr seems desperately trapped in a cycle of drinking, poignantly realising in the title track that he just needs to face the truth of his bad habits, although he doesn’t know if he can. “Waking up in a murder scene” at the start of Limbo is also one of the most chilling and compelling images of the album. Other times Kerr is a hateable anti-hero, like when he’s rejecting a potentially vulnerable friend on Either You Want It to the sound of a disconcertingly cheery indie rock backing;  “You lost your best friend and I’m sick of waiting for you to feel ready to talk,” he hollers in verse one. The album seems close to achieving some sort of narrative arc of redemption (or relapse), but instead the flow feels unnecessarily muddled, with moments of hope in songs like Million and One or Hold On lost within the bleakness. The biggest narrative killer of all, however, is the closer All We Have Is Now. Here Kerr looks for a bit of romantic existentialism and happy conclusion to the chaos, but the short track sounds blatantly bolted on, as if the band panicked a few weeks before release date when they realised they didn’t have a nice closer that resolved all of Kerr’s problems. Instead, the lazy outro creates more problems than it solves, and the reverb-dripping piano backing sounds like an early take of Mad World that got lost and found itself plonked on the end of a Royal Blood record.

With the exception of All We Have Is Now, Typhoons is an album lacking in complete duds. A breather from the funk-rock intensity might have helped limit the feeling of listening to a mere collection of singles, so it’s a good job the immaculate production and brilliant-as-ever riffs from Kerr make these singles worth coming back to in isolation. I just can’t wait for a future where these tracks get the packed-arena treatment they deserve.