Music > Live Reviews

Royal Blood

09/03/15

Who would’ve thought it when I first heard ‘Little Monster’ booming out on BBC Radio 6 in early 2014 that Brighton’s Royal Blood would be this big at the back end of the winter of 2015? Who would’ve thought that they would also have picked up the Best British Band award at the Brits earlier this month? These awards have for far too many years failed to acknowledge great new British talent, so it is encouraging to see a sea of change in recent years. Their self-titled debut album was the fastest-selling British rock debut album during last year and indeed of the last three years in the UK and since then it has been a rapid climb on the success ladder for the duo.

A sell out UEA LCR is eagerly awaiting their much anticipated entrance this evening and they do not ,in the main, disappoint as it’s a blistering paced set with no let up right from the opening track. It’s relentless, aggressive and full throttle as the amplifiers get turned up to 11 for the next sixty minutes or so the debut album gets a real pounding. With lead singer and bass guitarist Mike Kerr thwacking away while Thatcher smashes the drums into oblivion (he needs a bigger kit). They play the crowd well, as Thatcher in particular does the full rock and roll moody drummer swagger, threatening at one point to jump from the stack of amplifiers into the mosh pit. It’s all getting a little lively on the LCR floor just now. They’ve covered a handful of tracks by various artists during the past year including ‘Roxanne’ by The Police, but tonight we are treated to a quite stunning version of the T-Rex classic ‘Twentieth Century Boy’ and they more than do it justice. ‘Ten Tonne Skeleton’, ‘Little Monster’ and ‘Blood Hands’ are the highlights of the evening. The quality was great, but it certainly ruled over the quantity as the one disappointment of the evening was that they only played for an hour, and there was no encore either!  It just leaves you feeling a bit hard done by, doesn’t it, when you get such a short set? I was left craving for more. However, no one else in the audience apart from me appeared to mind too much as they all headed home looking very happy indeed.