After two UK #1 albums, 2 million album sales and an array of international
acclaim, you might’ve thought you knew what to expect from Royal Blood. Those
preconceptions were shattered when they released the first single from the
album, ‘Trouble’s Coming’. Hitting a melting pot of fiery rock
riffs and danceable beats, they delivered something fresh, unexpected and yet
entirely in tune with what they’d forged their reputation with.
When Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher sat down to talk about making a new album, they
knew what they wanted to achieve. It involved a conscious return to their roots,
back when they had made music that was influenced by Daft Punk, Justice, and
Philippe Zdar of Cassius. It also called for a similar back-to-basics approach
to what had made their self-titled debut album so thrilling, visceral and
original..
“We sort of stumbled on this sound, and it was immediately fun to play,”
recalls Kerr. “That’s what sparked the creativity on the new album, the
chasing of that feeling. It’s weird, though – if you think back to
‘Figure it Out’, it kind of contains the embryo of this album. We realised
that we didn’t have to completely destroy what we’d created so far; we just
had to shift it, change it. On paper, it’s a small reinvention. But when you
hear it, it sounds so fresh.”
That new approach manifested itself in the duo’s decision to produce the
majority of ‘Typhoons’ themselves. ‘Boilermaker’ was produced by Queens
of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, the two bands having first connected when
Royal Blood supported them on a huge North American tour. Meanwhile, the
multiple Grammy Award winner Paul Epworth produced ‘Who Needs Friends’ and
contributed additional production to ‘Trouble’s Coming’.