Royal Blood's Mike Kerr talks sneaking into tribute gig, 'Typhoons' and the duo's live return

Coinciding with the premiere of Royal Blood’s rip-roaring new single ‘Typhoons’ last week – the second taster of the duo’s fervently awaited third studio album of the same name – singer, bassist, co-songwriter and ivory tinkler Mike Kerr caught up with Kerrang! Radio’s Loz Guest for a chat via Zoom.

During the wide-ranging interview, Mike opened up about how life in lockdown actually helped shape the fresh musical direction on ‘Typhoons’ and he revealed why sneaking in to watch a tribute band’s gig gave him a huge epiphany.

Elsewhere, Mike explained that he and drummer Ben Thatcher are chomping at the bit to return to the live stage, and he revealed why they couldn’t tread the same musical paths as 2014’s ‘Royal Blood’ and 2017’s ‘How Did We Get So Dark?’.

Watch Mike Kerr's full chat with Loz right here:

Featuring title-track ‘Typhoons’ and the Kerrang! Radio playlisted anthem ‘Trouble’s Coming’, Royal Blood’s new album ‘Typhoons’ is released on Friday 30th April 2021 via Warner. Pre-order the album here.

Boasting 11 tracks, the album is written and largely self-produced by Royal Blood. Esteemed producer Paul Epworth worked on two tracks – ‘Who Needs Friends’ and ‘Trouble’s Coming’ – with Queens of the Stone Age legend Josh Homme producing ‘Boilermaker’.

You can read Loz’s full interview with Mike Kerr below:

Loz: Hi Mike, how are you?

Mike: “I'm good, thanks. It's strange, the album's done and it’s been a long process; a long journey to get to this stage, so I feel like a weight lifted off my shoulders if I'm honest.”

Loz: What a weird time as well. You know the past 12 months for everyone has just been completely chaotic and then you’ve been putting this new record together - album number three. Has the pandemic had an effect on the recording process and the way it's turned out?

Mike: “Yeah, we've been hugely affected by it. I guess it’s a bit weird saying this but it my view, it sort of helped. It's been a really weird way of making an album, but what I took from it is that it was very start/stop - there wasn't it wasn't a one session or metal album that was it. It was these bursts of sessions. Basically, there was a lot of periods where it felt like the album was done but then we’d need to be in a lockdown and we'd have to kind of stop. During these kind of pockets of timing breaks in between recording sessions, just to amuse myself I kept writing music and kept making songs and it was funny, every time I went to go and write a song, I didn't really have Royal Blood in mind. I was just kind of writing for fun, just writing for the sake of writing and I didn't have the band in mind, I didn't have these rules necessarily. As a result, these kind of wild songs were coming out and I realised I can't really escape the band I’m in and I started playing these early demos to Ben and he was like ‘Oh man, these have got to go on the album, these are great!’ So it's funny like, I would argue that some of the strongest material from the record was written in these weird lockdowns or when we're under this sense that the album was complete.”

Loz: With you and Ben, were you able to be near each other to write? Or were you having to be in each other's bubble, as it were? How does that work?

Mike: “It was a bit of both. We have our own studio, which was only a recent thing, which just became an absolute blessing cos’ obviously, it means we're the only ones going in and out of it. But there was times where we couldn’t be together. It was just kind of crazy. What it gave us was the opportunity also to reflect on where we were up to what we've been doing. Sometimes in the studio I feel like you can have blinkers on, you can lose perspective of where you're going with something. It meant that when we returned to these songs we finished them immediately because we knew exactly what we're going to do because that bit that has been bugging you for the last few weeks ‘I've got to change that and that's going here’.

Loz: Well I read somewhere an interesting quote I think from yourself saying ‘finally, you can see the band in colour’, which I thought was a very interesting way of looking at it.

Mike: “Yeah, I guess, being a two-piece and setting yourself up with the restrictions that we impose upon ourselves… after the second album, it felt like ‘I don't know how to move this forward by doing the same thing’ and everything felt the same. I think this is this new material that we were coming out with, it just felt like a breath of fresh air, it felt like it breathed life back into the band. Suddenly, it felt like for me, it had a future for the band of creatively where to go. The problem is with being a two-piece is you set yourself up with these limitations that at the beginning serve you. I feel like on this third record, they were no longer serving us. It felt like we were doing the same thing over and over again. So there was this, like, real hunger and real attitude in the studio towards finding something that felt new, but didn't feel like we were abandoning what the band was about. We also produced this record ourselves so I think we were the ones who were like if anyone's gonna add something it has to be us, we can't have some producer come in and kind of like destroy all we've spent years creating. So, once we started subtly adding extra elements and extra backing vocals and creating these kind of aesthetics in the recording, yeah, it did feel like colour. It felt like it felt like we had been seeing in black and white the whole time.

Loz: Seeing in black and white has served you well – you’ve had two number one albums!

Mike: “Yeah absolutely. But that served those records and it served that creative period, you know. The idea of going back and remaking what sounds like our first or second records, to appease anyone that loves those albums, that just seems gross (laughs) and not creatively fulfilling.”

Loz: You can tell the album is you guys in terms of Royal Blood, but like you say, it's different. I mean, it's so much fun. It's like Disco/DC, in many ways… there's that beat to it!

Mike: “Yeah, AC DC have that heartbeat, kind of danceable pulse through their music. And, and I think rock and roll throughout history has always been traditionally music you can dance to. And I think there's bands that that keep that sense of it alive. But it's pretty rare. It's mostly just music to fight to, isn't it? (Laughs) I'm sick of seeing an audience full of men (laughs), so you know, I want it to be 50/50! I think once we started playing along to these tempos. it was impossible to stop. It was just so fun and I think you can hear that on the songs. It was just like this whole new language, it didn't resemble writing at that point - it was just like, play and that’s how that's what it should be. It was amazing.”

Loz: I get a sense that it almost harkens back to when you were younger, when you were first discovering music. I read some great quotes and interviews with you talking about growing up with music when you were young, and how he used to react to it. And when you were learning to play the Beatles, and when you learn to play all these other bands, and the sort of energy and fun you found in music. I get a sense of that being in this record.

Mike: “Definitely. I would relate my love for music in my childhood to kind of what's going on now (with lockdown) in that I got bored very easily (growing up). I grew up in a pretty sleepy town - a seaside town - where nothing was really happening and music was the way of entertaining myself and having fun. It’s weird, what's going on now has created a similar environment where you can't go out and tour and when that's taken away from us, and all that's left is the other half of what I do, which is write. It meant that writing songs had this really profound purpose for me personally, and it was about creating my own fun. I think that's the best reason to write music, you know, it's for yourself. We were just sitting there thinking ‘I really love this, so either we're totally mad or we have something great’. That's how we felt about our debut record – ‘this is either brilliant, or it's terrible’. It's nothing in between. That's the only that's the only compass we really have on what other people are going to think. It’s been nice as well, you know, we've had this record to listen to, in my own time for a while, and it's, it's been mine - it's been ours - for a long time. And, yeah, we really have made it for ourselves.”

Loz: But so many others are going to enjoy it! I mean, you talk about the live element, about how much you're missing that. These songs that we've heard so far from the new one, they're going to be live favourites. They're going to be so much fun to play on stage aren’t they?

Mike: “Yeah. We were lucky enough to be able to film some live sessions for a few radio stations and get a taster of what it'd be like. It was so frustrating because we were kind of playing through these new songs and just felt I just like I can't wait to look down at the setlist and see them coming up. Kind of like what I was saying before is once we got into that world, it was really difficult to want to get out of it. Also as well, we really just think about live a lot and I think that some of these songs will balance out our older material as well. It just kind of emphasises the character of other songs. You know, heavier songs from our previous record will sound even heavier and then kind of groovier songs… everything will just define itself a lot more clearly.”

Loz: It will bring a lovely sort of texture to your setlist won’t it, and just the whole gig experience?

Mike: “Definitely. I had a really surreal experience of seeing a Royal Blood tribute band.”

Loz: What are they called?

Mike: “There’s a few… Loyal Blood. There's quite a lot actually but it was a really unique experience. They're really good. It’s a weird thing to experience. I realised ‘ah man, I really want some different types of songs in then set. This is the closest I’ll ever get to watching my own band.’”

Loz: Did they know you were there?

“They didn’t know we were there when we were at the show. We went and said hi afterwards. We didn’t want to freak them out! That was a really important moment because I was like ‘ah man, I really wish at this point there was a song that did this…’ It allowed me to fill in the gaps.”

Loz: If they end up watching this interview, they’re going to be really stoked because they will think – rightly so – that they’ve had an influence on the way it’s gone.

Mike: “I’ll let them know, they’re good guys!”

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