Royal Blood on how they achieve their sound

29 July 2023, 17:41

Royal Blood discuss their new album

The Brighton duo have revealed the secrets behind their simple rig to Radio X...

Royal Blood have revealed the secret behind their unique sound.

The Brighton duo - who are made up of frontman and bassist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher - explained how difficult it was to set up their very first rig.

"I made out it was so complex from day one, ‘cause I thought it would be funny... and it isn’t complex," Kerr revealed in a throwback interview.

Royal Blood are set to release a new album in September. Picture: Tom Beard/Press

"It’s been a joy for me to watch people plug 30 pedals and these made videos where someone’s going like ‘I’ve got the Royal Blood sound’ and the truth is that it really is two pedals and one of them’s a tuner."

The Out Of The Black singer added: “It’s evolved obviously from that point onwards, but that first record. That’s essentially what we recorded it on".

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On how easy it was to develop their sound altogether, the rocker revealed: "It was just so simple. There was almost no development. That first record is sort of the audible handshake of me and Ben coming together with no one else around us.

"Our sound is when we don’t add anything on top of that. It was very very simple and it was born out of a live setting”.

Royal Blood released their long-awaited third album, Typhoons, in 2021 which followed 2014's self-titled debut and 2017's How Did We Get So Dark?

Now, they are preparing to release their fourth studio album, Back To The Water Below, on 8th December 2023 and they offered up more insight into how they create melodies despite using instruments traditionally associated with accompaniment.

Quizzed by Radio X's Johnny Vaughan on how they form songs, Kerr replied: "We like to try and make sure there’s a song beneath it all, so sometimes we begin at the piano or an acoustic and it sounds nothing like the version you hear eventually.

"We kind of remove all that, keep the melody, keep the topline and then kind of... turn it into the devil’s music."