Royal Blood

The Arc of Royal Blood

The pivots — what forced Royal Blood to reinvent.

1. 01

   The Brighton Two-Piece Blueprint

   After Mike Kerr returned from a trip to Australia, Ben Thatcher picked him up from the airport and they went straight to a rehearsal space to write 'Out of the Black.' This era was defined by the strict limitation of the gear, using a signal splitter to send the bass to both a guitar amp and a bass rig simultaneously to fill the frequency gap. The self-titled debut was a massive hit because it sounded physical and raw, avoiding the over-processed digital sheen of 2014 radio rock. It was a brief window where the novelty of the setup matched the ferocity of the performance.

2. 02

   The Pink Noise Pivot

   By the time they got to 'Typhoons' in 2021, the band realized they couldn't just keep playing Led Zeppelin riffs forever without boring themselves to death. They leaned into Kerr's love for Daft Punk and Justice, bringing in a touring keyboardist and thickening the mix with disco-influenced rhythms and synths. This shift forced the bass to move from a sludge-heavy lead instrument into a tighter, more rhythmic role that played off the pocket. It was a divisive move for the purists, but it saved them from becoming a heritage act before they hit thirty.

Influences

• The White Stripes — Jack White is the obvious tactical ancestor for the limited-lineup-maximum-volume approach. You hear it in the way Thatcher hits the snare like he's trying to break the hardware, mirroring Meg White's primitive, heavy-handed thud. It's the blueprint for filling a stadium with only two people on stage.
• Queens of the Stone Age — Kerr has cited 'Songs for the Deaf' as a primary influence and eventually had Josh Homme produce 'Boilermaker.' That staccato, 'robot rock' guitar phrasing is the DNA of their riff writing. You hear it in the dry, airless production style they favored early on.
• Led Zeppelin — They covered 'Dazed and Confused' in their early live sets and the swing in Thatcher’s drumming is straight from the John Bonham school of percussion. The heavy use of blues-pentatonic scales on 'Figure It Out' is a direct nod to Jimmy Page's 1970s output. It's the foundational heavy-blues vocabulary they use to build their hooks.
• Muse — The band toured with Muse in 2015 and Kerr has acknowledged Matt Bellamy's use of the Manson guitar's built-in effects as an inspiration for his own signal chain. The high-octave fuzz and stadium-sized melodrama on 'How Did We Get So Dark?' echoes the prog-metal theatricality Bellamy popularized. Both bands treat the bass as a lead-distortion vehicle.
• Daft Punk — Kerr explicitly called out the 'Discovery' era as the main inspiration for the rhythmic shift on their third album. The four-on-the-floor kick drums and syncopated bass lines on 'Typhoons' are a direct attempt to translate French House into a rock format. It turned their sound from a mosh pit into a dance floor.