TRACK REVIEW: Royal Blood - Limbo — Music Musings & Such

TRACK REVIEW:

Royal Blood

PHOTO CREDIT: Warner Records

Limbo

9.3/10

The track, Limbo, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61UkkpsASwQ

GENRES:

Alternative/Disco/Dance

ORIGIN:

Brighton, U.K.

The album, Typhoons, is available to pre-order here:

https://www.royalbloodband.com/typhoons/

RELEASE DATE:

30th April, 2021

LABEL:

Warner Records

PRODUCER:

Royal Blood

TRACKLISTING:

Trouble's Coming

Oblivion

Typhoons

Who Needs Friends

Million and One

Limbo

Either You Want It

Boilermaker

Mad Visions

Hold On

All We Have Is Now

__________

I have been following the work of Royal Blood…

PHOTO CREDIT: Warner Records

since their eponymous debut album came out in 2014. That seems like such a long time ago but, since then, Mike Kerr (vocals, bass) and Ben Thatcher (drums) have come a long way. Their sound has developed and changed. I am excited to review their new single, Limbo. Ahead of the release of their third studio album, Typhoons, next month, the guys have been getting a lot of attention. At a time when there are not many artists who can deliver the edginess of Rock with elements of Dance and Disco, there is a lot to be said for Royal Blood’s importance and place in modern music. I shall come to the new single in a minute. Before then, I want to bring in an article from NME from 2017 (when their second album, How Did We Get So Dark?, was being promoted). We discover about the modest start of two fantastic musicians:

“It’s worth remembering where it all started. Just four years ago, they were pulling pints back home in Brighton. The pair, friends since their mid-teens, were making do. Mike went travelling in Australia for nine months. When he flew home early in 2013, Ben picked him up from the airport. In the car, he played him some demos he’d recorded. They formed a duo, rehearsed the next day and played their first gig in a Worthing pub the same week. Having both played in bands before, though, they decided this one was different.

Ironically, Royal Blood was supposed to be less serious – a chance to just have some fun. “I remember putting ‘Figure It Out’ on SoundCloud after we recorded it and being like, ‘This is going to blow people’s minds,’” says Mike. “I got a text from two of my mates saying, “I heard that tune – yeah, nice one.’ Basically, no one gave a s**t, and I was like, ‘What the f**k? Ben, times are tough – no one likes rock anymore.’”

But just a couple of months later, their ascension went into hyperspeed. Mike was still living with his parents. Their early shows got the music industry excited – the two-pronged dynamic of The White Stripes meeting the venomous riffs of Queens Of The Stone Age soon had them tagged as mainstream rock’s great new saviours (they still insist they’re not). After a bunch of buzzy support slots, a spot on the NME Awards Tour in March 2014 followed. By May, they were sharing a stage with Arctic Monkeys at London’s Finsbury Park. They had momentum and in August, when their self-titled debut arrived, it became the fastest-selling rock debut in three years, outperforming the first-week sales of first efforts by the likes of The Strokes and Kasabian. They became one of the few bands to have played new artists festival The Great Escape and the MTV EMAs in the same year. Things moved that fast. They were, as they recall, on “a ramp of insanity”.

It does seem like they were thrust into the limelight pretty soon. That is because of their terrific sound and how tight they are as a duo! I don’t want to skip ahead too fast and look at where they are now without covering the time between their formation and the new single. I am always interested seeing how groups (or duos) form and how they grow as a unit. In the case of Royal Blood, there was a chemistry and kinetic energy between Kerr and Thatcher that resonated with people and made an impression. I remember hearing Figure It Out when it came out and being hooked by its rawness. It also had this hip-swivelling vibe and groove. It is no surprise that a song like that would get into people’s heads and pique their interest!

I know Royal Blood have moved on from their 2014 debut and their sound has undergone some transformation. I want to come back to that album, as there was a lot of interest from the music media. Now, there is talk as to whether Rock is dead and if it is as potent and meaningful as it was years ago – the same debate that seems to crop up quite a lot. Although the guys wore their influences on their sleeves, their sound was pretty awesome and had incredible energy and explosion. In this article from The Independent, Mike Kerr spoke about the debut album and what it is like gigging around the Brighton area (where they were formed):

“Channelling Queens of the Stone Age, Led Zeppelin and early Muse with their ferociously energetic blues-rock, Royal Blood had crowds at SXSW enthralled. When I saw them, single “Out of the Black” and “Blood Hands” were highlights. “That’s based around guilt,” explains Kerr. “A lot of our songs, especially lyrically, are quite inward and based on personal experiences, relationships...” The duo make such an astonishing amount of noise that you find yourself doing a double take to be sure you’re not missing some hidden guitarist. It’s no wonder that Kerr’s bass playing has been the subject of praise; he plays as if it’s a guitar.

“There’s nothing recorded or being looped,” says Kerr. “We’re very resistant to the idea of backing tracks or having any sort of hidden members on stage so what you hear is what’s happening.” But the exact method of achieving such a full force of sound is closely guarded. “We’ve kept the whole thing a secret – we’re doing pretty well at it.” It’s a form that suits them perfectly, and one that’s in vogue if you look at the current wave of rock duos (Drenge, The Black Keys). But being a duo was never on the agenda when they met as teenagers on the close-knit south-coast music scene, performing in various bands together at everything from weddings to bar mitzvahs. They grew up in seaside villages on the outskirts of Brighton; Kerr in Worthing, Thatcher in Rustington.

“It’s such a small music scene and everyone’s from the same college so you end up playing every weekend with the same bands. We’ve played every genre of music together,” says Kerr, “But I never thought I’d be in a two-piece. It was never planned. It just started off as the two of us and the idea of adding anyone else would mean taking away something.” There are, they explain, just as many pros as there are cons to playing as a duo. There’s the limitation to what they can play, granted, but it makes things that much quicker. And with the chemistry they have due to playing together throughout their teenage years, there’s an innate understanding. “We’re on the same page,” says Thatcher. “If there’s something that works we’ll know instantly. There’s never a compromise.” Kerr adds: “It’s all off-the-cuff, spontaneous and of the moment. There’s never a moment where we’re at our desk with a pen. It’s very primitive and we keep playing together until we find something. It’s kind of like throwing jokes at each other until the other person laughs”.

I am going to forward things to the anticipated second album. There was a few years between Royal Blood and How Did We Get So Dark?. Thatcher and Kerr took the simplicity and effectiveness of their debut and added in lyrics that were, perhaps, more personal. In terms of the sound, there are some backing vocals on the album - though I think their approaching third album is more of a sonic evolution. Returning to that NME interview, it was clear that new influences were being stirred into the mix:

“While it’s most definitely a rock album, this time Royal Blood were determined to bring in all of their influences. Take, as an example, ‘Lights Out’: “We were going for a Daft Punk thing quite a lot and trying to f**k with the rock thing, I guess,” says Mike. “What would Daft Punk do if they wrote a rock tune?” Then there’s the album’s closing track ‘Sleep’, which they describe as a “Black Sabbath hip-hop tune”.

“I don’t really like a lot of rock music,” says Mike. “I mean, obviously I love a lot of it, but the tour bus is pretty spicy isn’t it? It’s pretty R&B-heavy. There’s a lot of things where you’d be like, ‘What the f**k? You like that?’”

“Got a bit of Usher going on,” nods Ben. “The parties on the bus get wild. We’re all dancing to ‘Work’ by Kelly Rowland by the end of the night. I love Drake and all that lot. In their shows and their production, you can really get something out of it and put it into your own interpretation and music.” Mike picks up, “Those guys are the new rock stars – they’re the new punk, far more than rock. They’re the ones taking all the risks and doing things for the first time. To be elitist about your genre is closed-minded and mad”.

If that sounds concerning to any rock purist’s ears, they needn’t worry. Musically, album two is harder, but lyrically it’s also more honest, centring around Mike’s personal relationships. It sounds like a break-up record. Just look at the song titles: ‘I Only Lie When I Love You’, ‘She’s Creeping’, ‘Hole In Your Heart”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pooneh Ghana

I think that the second album is a bit more diverse in terms of themes. I also feel there is more confidence through How Did We Get So Dark?. Perhaps that it because of the touring that followed the popularity of their debut. I am going to explore Royal Blood’s touring in a bit. Before then, I want to source from an inews article that was published around the time of How Did We Get So Dark? being released. It seems that the touring and late nights took its toll on the guys:

“They’ve spent the past three years on the road, stopping gigging only to work on their highly anticipated second album, How Did We Get So Dark?. It’s a pertinent question for a band that grew up on the Spice Girls (Kerr remains an unabashed fan), but the answer seems to be that fame has come at a cost. Both Kerr, 27, and Thatcher, 29, are painfully private people, already on record as regarding promotional interviews the way melancholic civil servants view the daily commute.

That said, they do concede that this is a break-up album, full of songs of disillusion and dejection. Both are single – three years ago, Thatcher was married – largely because touring the world with your rock heroes isn’t commensurate to maintaining close, loving relationships at home after all. Partners become strangers; friends view you with new suspicion. “For the past couple of years, every night was like a weekend for us: lots of parties, lots of drinking,” Kerr offers. He admits that they both overdid it, and that both have been hospitalised due to their on-the-road habits – Kerr with gastroenteritis. “We got burned out, didn’t know how to eat or sleep”.

Before I come to the touring side of things and the way the duo were thrust into public consciousness, I want to side-step a little and focus on their writing process. I don’t think that many people have asked Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher about their process. Back in 2018, Thatcher was asked about, among other things, how the writing and recording comes together:

“How do you guys go about writing? Do you have to be in the same room as each other or do you send each other demos and that kind of thing?

There’s no way of writing a song that we’ve come to patent but some come from little demos, some come from writing in a room together and jamming out but they all come together when we’re recoding in the studio, when it comes down to the nitty gritty of it; changing parts , lyrics or whatever, that all comes down right at the end.

That sounds like the studio space in which your working is pretty influential on how things turn out.

Yeah, I guess so. To be enclosed in a studio, you can get a bit claustrophobic and a bit miserable. It’s all about keeping it fresh and not beating yourself up too much about things and just getting it right.

It’s interesting that you say that the meaning of it is somewhat open to interpretation because I’ve encountered lots of artists that are very stringent on every small detail to do with their artistic output and I think sometimes I can be nice to let that go and let collaborations flow a bit more.

Definitely. Y’know, you don’t need to explain a beaten path, do ya? You take from that walk what you want. I think that’s a really nice thing, rather than someone telling you what it means. We have the same thing with our lyrics. We don't really want to explain a situation about something we did to someone and go “here’s a song, here’s something completely different about it”. It’s nice of them to take away what they want to”.

I feel that a lot of Royal Blood’s potency and popularity stems from their live performances. I think that songs can sound great on an album, yet it is the way artists translate them onto the stage that can have the biggest effect. Because people are experiencing the music close and personal, I think that can do more in terms of recruiting fans than releasing albums. Whilst Royal Blood are thrilling on record, an extra level is accomplished when they step onto the stage. In this interview with Source from 2018, we discover how touring has its highs and lows:

“Performing live brings a sense of relief and adrenaline to the songs that the duo hold dear. Impassioned and thunderous live shows are what Royal Blood do well but this time lessons have been learned. After touring their self-titled debut album both Ben and Mike were hospitalised, alongside most of their crew, for simply having too much fun.

“It is the best feeling in the world. It still throws me off because I don’t understand how we’ve got to this stage but we do love every single second of it,” says Ben. “We love what we do so much, we do love to party and we love playing shows. We were having so much fun that we really forgot to look after ourselves so we got really ill. We don’t regret any of it. It was brilliant – we’ve learned how to party this time around so we’ve got stamina.”

Learning how to handle an after party to selling out arenas across Europe and UK in their biggest tour to date is a testament of the quality Royal Blood bring to the stage. Compared to performing in bars and clubs the production for this tour has an improved standing to make sure their songs resonate well on stage. “I think the more we play, the more fans we get, the more people come to our shows and the bigger the rooms get. We can do a lot more in a bigger room, a lot more production. We can really go for it I guess compared to when we first started playing little club shows to 100 people,” reminisces Ben.

As their fan base grows it is heart-warming to hear that the novelty of playing their songs live is not lost as Ben says: “It is surreal walking out on that stage – it doesn’t get old”.

For many artists, they find this sense of release and spirit from being on the stage. I have heard so many times how artists are extroverted on stage and then are fairly introverted off the stage. It is a fascinating shift. I wonder what it is about live music that can bring out something from an artist. Going back to that inews interview, Mike Kerr explained how there is a difference between Royal Blood’s music and what they are like away from the stage:

“You do wonder how growing success will continue to affect – and disaffect – them – but then they probably wonder themselves. We like our internationally successful rock stars to be snarly, but they’re not remotely like that. We meet at an east London hotel so hipster it hurts – nobody recognises them – and they remain doggedly nice and polite, no newly developed menacing egos, no suggestion of a dark side. And no visible tattoos. They are just two regular blokes from Brighton going deaf for a living, one of them in a baseball cap. When the waitress comes to our table, they order a pot of green tea, which they share equably.

“We are not rock stars; our music is,” says Kerr. The distinction is important. “When we go on stage, it’s almost like a boxer going into the ring: all performance. It’s pantomime, basically. On stage, I want us to be larger than life, a caricature. Offstage, we’re happy to remain unnoticed, invisible”.

Even though Kerr and Thatcher might lead a life quieter than their music suggests, there are natural pitfalls of being on the road for so long. It can be easy to succumb to excess and become worn down by the gruelling schedule. Not that this afflicts ever band, though there seems to be some truth in that theory when it comes to Royal Blood.

PHOTO CREDIT: Carl Neumann

In an interview with the Evening Standard of 2017, we learn more about the Rock excess that can be quite dangerous:

“It’s no wonder then that band haven’t settled down just yet: the pair are currently on tour, and it sounds like heavy nights out on the road are something they're very used to.

"We just came off tour with Queens of the Stone Age, which nearly killed us," Mike says. "It was absolute carnage. It was like a four-week stag do.”

It's not just Queens of the Stone Age that the pair have spent time drinking with either: Royal Blood also supported the Foo Fighters on run of shows a while back, which sounds equally as full-on.

Sharing a story about a particularly heavy night with Dave Grohl and co, Mike said: “I smoked a massive joint when they were coming to the end of their set during one show. Then, the next thing I know Dave Grohl tells me to get on stage, and I was like: “Oh, shit.” So I walked on stage absolutely obliterated, and then Dave made me down a bottle of Champagne in front of 80,000 people”.

In an interview with HEAVY, we glean more about what it was like being on the road so long as part of Royal Blood. Even though there are bad points and it can be easy to drink too much and sleep too little, there are plenty of benefits that the duo were keen to point out:

“Things happen every day that we’re reminded of. I think we’ve got such a great team around us and we’re solidly touring together that this has become a family – things happen in your family and thing go wrong, but I can say it’s just so much fun being with everybody – people think we’re crazy because of the in-jokes going on.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Joeseth Carter

Evidently, tour life suits Royal Blood – but despite the fun and antics along the journey, Thatcher is careful to count his blessings and reaffirms his passion for his music outweighs any negative shortcomings. “I think you have to be careful with what you complain about because we’re living this dream job! We get to tour the world and play our music to a lot of people and so for the bits we don’t like so much we’re like, ‘how can we complain about that?’

“For instance, we were travelling for 40 hours to get here, which is not the most exciting journey ever, but why am I complaining about that? I get to be here in Australia and play to people and meet new, great people – you can’t complain about it! But on that 40-hour journey, you go crazy. You hallucinate.”

Moving at such a rapid pace and so admired by their peers and fans, one can only wonder what’s next for Royal Blood. “We really enjoy what we do so it’s easy for us – we love touring and can’t wait to be on tour with Queens Of The Stone Age, then after that, we have our own arena tour where we get to watch At The Drive In play with us… and then it’s Christmas,” Thatcher says with a boyish grin, “I love Christmas!

“And then, back to Australia after that!” There’s plans all over for Royal Blood – though the album has just come out, they just don’t quit. “It is constant,” Thatcher says, “I don’t fully know myself where I’ll be at the beginning of next year but [after Christmas] it’ll be back to work, playing the game”.

Coming forward to fairly recently, and it seems that the duo had a lot of ideas and energy before the pandemic struck. I was wondering whether we would see a fairly quick follow-up after 2017’s How Did We Get So Dark?. I reckon touring demand and a need to recharge meant that work did not begin immediately on a third album. Drawing from an interview DIY conducted late last year, we learn how there was a lot of promise and immediacy in the camp early in 2020:

“Back in March, Royal Blood were finally cooking with gas. They’d spent much of 2019 trying to follow up their second record, the Number One-charting ‘How Did We Get So Dark?’, yet had been struggling for inspiration; more than 60 songs were written and discarded, as the duo aimed to abreak away into new sonic territory. Last summer, however, a run of huge festival slots - including sub-headlining positions on the main stage at Reading and Leeds - finally set their creative juices flowing, and by the start of this year they had an album that they were not only happy with, but that frontman Mike Kerr felt confident was their finest work to date.

And then… well, we all know what happened back in March. In the middle of recording LP3 in London, the studio closed as lockdown commenced, putting proceedings on hold yet again just as Mike and drummer Ben Thatcher were finally getting somewhere. “After a week or so of sitting around at home, I decided I might as well try to keep making music,” says the singer. “So I went into the studio near my house and just started writing for the sake of it, which is really the best place to be - that’s how you start out, just writing to entertain yourself more than anything. By the time it was safe to get back to work, I came out of this weird little twilight zone I’d been in with three new songs, and I honestly thought they were the best three I’d ever written. So, from a musical point of view, lockdown was brilliant. More personally, it was fucking scary and isolating, but that’s obviously not a unique experience.”

Far from upending the progress already made, the new tracks slotted seamlessly into the running order, “almost like they were the answer to the questions we’d been asking ourselves” notes Mike. Two of them will be singles, with the still-untitled record - which is now in the final stages of mixing - tentatively slated for release in the spring of 2021, when the pair will aim to make it a hat-trick of chart-toppers”.

Staying with the DIY interview for now. I mentioned how Royal Blood have developed through the years and there has been sonic and lyrical shifts. For Mike Kerr especially, events in his personal life can be attributed to the way Royal Blood have moved:

“For Mike, the new musical trajectory was made possible by a profound breakthrough in his personal life. “I had to change one thing, and that was everything,” he laughs. “A big part of that was the way I was living. I needed to be in a different headspace.” The singer has been sober since February 2019, and points to the decision as the basis for the euphoric sound that came to define the new record. “It’s had a huge effect. My entire headspace has shifted; it’s changed my outlook, my relationships, the way I think about music, everything,” he continues. “I really feel like it’s helped me to access all of my brain, all of my potential. There were a lot of reasons for wanting to sort my shit out, but my songwriting has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of it. It’s why that festival run we did last year was huge; I had to prove to myself that I could do it sober. And I did it, and I was singing and playing better than ever, so I came away from that with genuine confidence. I didn’t feel like I needed to answer to anybody. So, that’s what had to change. My entire life!”.

The new album, Typhoons, is out on 30th April. Limbo is the current single from it. In some ways, I think that Royal Blood have taken a similar sonic approach to Muse. The Devon band started out by having one particular sound and, down the line, they added elements of Dance, Funk and Disco into their brew. The latest album, 2018’s Simulation Theory, has elements of 1980s Pop and Disco. In the case of Royal Blood, I think that they have come across this new sound because they want to change things up. They also have an affinity for this type of music, and they seem very connected and natural in this mould. To start, Limbo has this sort of strobing and intergalactic sound. With some synthesisers and a rather spacey vibe, one gets drawn into the song. For those expecting Royal Blood to come rampaging right out of the gates, they might need to readjust their mindset. That rush does come soon enough. With elements of Daft Punk, their guitar-and-drum assault has plenty of wiggle and funkiness! The opening lines definitely provoke strong images: “Wake up every morning/Almost surprised I survived/Blood on the pillow/Tears in my eyes/Slept in a murder scene last night”. With the electricity of the guitar (Mike Kerr plays bass guitar but it is made to sound like an electric guitar) and the thunder of the drum, one can get sucked into the song. It is a great track that has lines that make you wonder: “Nobody move/Nobody gets hurt/On loop the loop/Can’t get out of reverse”. The chorus has this sort of Disco vibe that is really interesting! We heard some of this on Royal Blood’s previous album, but I wonder whether this will be explored more on Typhoons.

PHOTO CREDIT: Joeseth Carter

I get the feeling that Typhoons is another album – like How Did We Get So Dark? – where the duo are more personal. I think that Mike Kerr especially is putting a lot of himself onto the page. The chorus finds our hero pouring his heart out: “Stuck in limbo (All this time)/Waiting (Up all night)/Waiting (Stuck inside in limbo, limbo)/I need saving (All this time)/I’m fading (Hold on tight)/Fading (Stuck inside in limbo, limbo)/Stuck in limbo (All this time)/Waiting (Up all night)/I’m waiting (Stuck inside in limbo, limbo)/I need saving (All this time)/I’m fading (Hold on tight)/Fading (Stuck inside in limbo, limbo)”. With a tiny musical bridge, we are into the next verse. Juxtaposed against a quite fun and dance-provoking backdrop are lyrics that have quite a lot of darkness. Our man is looking in the mirror and does not like what he sees: “Now I’ve become someone/I don’t recognise/I despise/Numb and defeated/Part paralysed/I think I’m starting again so I roll the dice”. It is quite a stark and naked revelation from the lead! With Thatcher’s drums rolling and rumbling, there is this edginess and atmosphere that blends nicely with something warmer and more colourful. “But I should stop and take my own advice/It’s no wonder/I found myself lost ignoring all the signs/Fading” are the next, wise lines.

There then arrives this intensity where the words seem to fall from the sky, in the sense that Kerr barely pauses for breath. It is anxious and thrilling in equal measures: “Somebody calm me down/Wake me up slow/Don’t leave me too late/Don’t wait/Till I’m stuck in limbo/Limbo/Somebody calm me down/Wake me up slow/Don’t leave me too late/Don’t wait/Until my body is cold/And I’m stuck in limbo/Till my body is cold/My body is cold/My body is cold/Till my body is cold/Yeah my body is cold/And I’m stuck in limbo/Stuck in limbo/Stuck in limbo/Yeah I’m stuck in limbo”. After that rather wracked and rushing tide, we then get an instrumental passage to bring the song down. Returning to that spacey sound of the intro, it is a nice moment where the story is bookend with this blend of Disco, Dance and Electronica. I think that Limbo promises to be a real highlight of Typhoons. Royal Blood have definitely evolved since their debut and I really like what they are doing in terms of their sound now. The lyrics are more soul-baring and raw. It is a new stage for Royal Blood - one that will keep existing fans invested whilst bringing in new ones.

I am going to finish off soon. Before then, keep an eye on tour dates for the duo. Things are likely to change in terms of where they can travel to, though I hope that they get to hit the road and take Typhoons to the masses. It is an album that warrants big stages and that exhilarating energy that you can only get from live performance. I want to end by bringing in an exert from a GQ interview that Mike Kerr was involved with last year:

“GQ: The first time you wanted to be a musician…

Mike Kerr: The track was Penny Lane. I was, I guess, about six. That was my first real memory of music, and it totally blew my mind. It was at school, during a music lesson, and I have a vivid memory of the teacher playing “Nimrod” by Elgar on the same day. I didn't even differentiate that they were two different styles – I just knew I wanted do the same thing.

The first time you played to a live audience?

I had a band; we were 14, 15 when we started it. And obviously it's very difficult to even get a gig when you’re that age! There was some dodgy ska night going on in Worthing in this really dodgy pub, that has actually been destroyed now, on the seafront. I'm pretty sure we just sort of snuck in. It was a three-band bill and we were on first. I think, after we played, the police showed up, and the whole night got taken down because obviously there were so many people who were underage. We looked like children. It was actually pretty rock and roll, even though the music we were playing was obviously lame.

The first advice that had an impact on you?

I’ve always been so influenced by Josh Homme. Musically, but [also] he has these amazing quips all the time. One of them is: “If you can't outsmart them, outdumb them.” As soon as I heard him say that, it resonated with me so much, because when I started Royal Blood, I didn't actually know how to play the bass. I'd never really sung in a band before.

I think the reason I wrote a lot of those riffs, [which] are very simple, [is that] I felt like I was “outdumbing” people. I always use “Seven Nation Army” as the epitome of that idea. It's so simple, and it's the first thing you would you could learn playing guitar. That could be lesson one. Yet every guitarist in the world wishes they wrote it. That’s something I really hold on to, with my songwriting. I remain kind of nervous and scared of things that are too complicated. I think Einstein said, “Everything should be as simple as possible, and never simpler”.

I shall end things there. Make sure that you pre-order Typhoons and buy an album that is going to be among the best of 2021! At a time when Rock is changing and bringing in other genres, I think that one can hardly discuss this genre dying out. Whilst Rock is not as it was years ago, there are a lot of interesting bands around that are taking it to new places. Our very own Royal Blood are among the most inventive and interesting around. I know they will continue to play together for years and explore new realms and sonic possibilities. Typhoons is shaping up to be a mighty album that deserves fond focus and respect. Royal Blood always bring some interesting to the table and, on Limbo, they have concocted…