Daily Dose: ‘Out of the Black’ by Royal Blood

I’m sure that everyone who’s heard of music is familiar with the phenomenon that is Royal Blood by now, but before the inevitable backlash by people when hipster opinion shifts on them and people start deriding them to look cool, I thought it might be worth revisiting just how special their self-titled debut album really was. I could have picked most of the tracks of it, but I went for this one as it was the opener, and it kicks ass. The sound they put out is still pretty impressive, utilising at its core just a bass guitar and a set of drums, but they obvious utilise such advance techniques as a bunch of effects pedals, octave shifting, and hitting the drums really, really hard. The musicianship is pretty impressive for sure, but the amount of force created on this track (and the album) is something really special, and it’s no wonder that all their live performances at festivals have been generally crammed out, which is pretty impressive for two boys from Brighton playing hard rock. If you’re a cynic, I’d urge you to reconsider, as there is more going on here than perhaps they’re given credit for. It was number one in the UK, should have won the mercury prize, and was lauded critically, and when you consider the constituent parts, that’s amazing for is functionally pumped up rock music, in this day and age. That is because it is a ginormous high quality explosion of energy, and I’m curious to see how they follow it up.