Royal Blood

The afternoon spent waiting for Royal Blood, the power duo made up of frontman Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher, promised to be sweltering and intense outside Milan's Alcatraz, given that the first fans had already started showing up by late morning—and who could blame them: after several Covid-related postponements, the Brighton band was about to set foot in Italy again for the first time in five years. There was also an uneasy feeling among those present about Kerr's health: still not fully recovered from a bout of Covid contracted in late March, he had been forced just days earlier to cut short the band's set at Hurricane Festival in Scheeßel, Germany, due to a sudden loss of voice.

Doing the honours as openers, as ever, are a band still chasing their breakthrough in the alt-rock scene, The Amazons, led by Matt Thomson, who warm up the crowd with a handful of songs, leading with the guitar power of “Ready For Something”, the anthemic, catchy “Bloodrush” and the unreleased slow-burner “One By One”, previews of their third album “How Will I Know If Heaven Will Find Me?”, due out in September.

Royal Blood take the stage joined by touring member Darren James, on keyboards and backing vocals, opening with the infectious “Typhoons”, the centrepiece of the divisive album of the same name released last year, followed by the even more forceful “Boilermaker”, produced by Josh Homme, whose influence is clearly felt, with the crowd getting even more fired up.

The setlist is well balanced, skilfully alternating all of the duo's hits, who hold the stage for nearly an hour and forty minutes across a total of seventeen songs, drawn largely from their latest, more dance-leaning record and from their 2014 debut “Royal Blood”, the rawer, more hard-rock album that first brought them to a mass audience, also including the surprise single released in March, “Honeybrains”.

Grabbing the most attention are the cutting bass of “Hook, Line & Sinker” and especially “Little Monster”, rounded off by a closing drum improvisation from Thatcher—a moment that makes him the real star of the night and fully justifies the recent accolade bestowed on him by several specialist magazines, namely being named “one of the best drummers in the UK”, alongside the sleight-of-hand theatrics of “How Did We Get So Dark?”.

Scarlet lights frame the slow-burning “Blood Hands”, after which Kerr effectively introduces James to the crowd as “the third Royal Blood”, kneeling before him at the end of “Million And One”: with the fourth album already in the works, could this be a hint of even more electronic territory to come? We'll probably only need a few months to find out. “Loose Change” and the more famous one-off hit “Figure It Out” carry the crowd through to the encore, which includes a moment of calm with the piano of “All We Have Is Now”, jarring compared to the rest of the set but, in the long run, one of the more understated moments, allowing everyone to catch their breath just in time to close out with the fan favourites “Ten Tonne Skeleton” and “Out Of The Black”.

Although slightly below par vocally—though a minor issue with the venue's not always excellent acoustics can't be ruled out—Royal Blood deliver a more than worthy performance, leaving fans sweaty and 100% satisfied, underscoring the need for live music that perhaps doesn't aim too high and that might turn up the nose of anyone looking for something more sophisticated. A performance, then, aimed more at those hungry for energy (and really, who isn't these days?), and the tried-and-tested Kerr-Thatcher partnership will likely always deliver on that front.

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