Royal Blood – ‘Dead Company’ review: Brighton riff lords flex their massive muscles

When Royal Blood broke their year-long social media silence in June with this mouth-watering teaser for ‘Ten Over Ten’, the first single from fifth album ‘Dead Company’, they were effectively issuing the sound of an extreme weather warning. After rock fans evacuated and braced for impact, the Brighton duo fulfilled this initial promise of a heavy new direction, as the song descended into a thrashy, rampant Motörhead march. “Everything or nothing / That’s how I roll”, cries vocalist Mike Kerr, who matches the track’s attitude atop “the bed of an earthquake shaking”.

Since broadening their framework on groovier, Josh Homme-assisted third album ‘Typhoons’ (2021), the more flat-out unification of Kerr’s heavily distorted bass with Ben Thatcher’s robust drumming has been a road less travelled for Royal Blood. But ‘Ten Over Ten’ hinted ‘Dead Company’ would be a ticket back to 2014, suggesting the sound that secured Royal Blood a Mercury Prize nomination, BRIT Award and catalysed their ascent to arenas would return on album five.

“It has the energy of our first record,” Thatcher told NME recently, “but [with] four albums’ experience.” The challenge facing ‘Dead Company’ is honouring the excitement that pulled them in this direction without falling into the trap of copy-and-paste. The frantic title track knocks this task for six, arguably eclipsing their entire first two albums, courtesy of its cutthroat production value and Kerr’s raging, turbulent riffs. Synced on EA Sports FC 27, expect it to cause an epidemic of smashed-up video game controllers (for the right reasons).

‘Ride’ is the centrepiece of this album’s trajectory (“too late for turning around”), refusing to surrender its stamina, reminiscent of the chorus in debut album highlight ‘You Can Be So Cruel’ – only turbo-charged with steroids this time. ‘Mother Never Told You’ and ‘Tapping Out’ contain some audaciously bombastic riff-work, although the surface-level brutality does drown out the impact of Kerr’s vocal delivery in both. Relentlessness was the overarching throughline for ‘Dead Company’, but some attributes do feel surplus to requirements.

“On the final straight”, the more atmospheric ‘Take Em All’ allows Royal Blood to gasp for air (“Take it off your shoulders”), injecting a change of pace into ‘Dead Company’. ‘The Closer’ maintains this spirit, a haunting climax that tastefully weaves in some moody ambience from the band’s previous album. While much of this album circles back to their roots, these less blistering moments carve open fresh creative loops, progressing that framework from ‘Back To The Water Below’ where varied soundscapes and energies can all intersect.

Despite threatening to disrupt the evolutionary flow that ‘Typhoons’ instigated, in actuality, ‘Dead Company’ carries the hallmarks of another ground zero moment for Royal Blood. While their pals Queens Of The Stone Age talk about entering their “third act”, perhaps this album moves Royal Blood into phase two, representing their first extensive and instinctual reckoning with what many still regard as their core sound.