Royal Blood – Dead Company
Royal Blood's latest album is competently made and frequently enjoyable, but almost entirely foreseeable
Royal Blood albums, by now, have the dependable appeal of a visit to McDonald’s: you know exactly what you’ve come for. Whether you’ll savour it afterwards? That’s another story. An ephemeral 30-minute runtime may indicate that everyone is aware of the sentiment.
On Dead Company, Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher return to the familiar proposition of extravagantly distorted bass and battering drums. Swallow the Bomb is gratifyingly frantic, Ten Over Ten hurtles along with something of Motörhead’s reckless momentum and sonic cavernousness. It’s competently made, frequently enjoyable and almost entirely foreseeable. Even with this rod for its own back, moments like Rear View Mirror recall the immediacy of their 2014 debut and are hard to ignore for the toe-tapping impulse they conjure.
Similarly, Kerr’s writing is oddly disembodied, bordering on vacuous. He invokes big feelings with almost no context as to what might warrant such pat drama. 'Gotta feel to heal' he waxes on the title track, in a sentiment so trite it causes the eyes to roll. The lyrics have the free-floating fluency of AI-generated rock rhetoric, except Kerr’s been writing like this since before the machines caught up.
Ride – a highlight on this set – offers an unlikely double take, its opening riff uncannily reminiscent of the synth hook on Lady Gaga’s Mary Jane Holland of all things. Otherwise, there’s precious little to interrupt the expected pleasures. Royal Blood know how to deliver. Is that really enough?
Listen to: Ride, Rear View Mirror