I t was quite a call to get. The day before Arctic Monkeys were set to headline Glastonbury in 2013, the band’s drummer, Matt Helders, asked his management to see if they could get hold of a T-shirt from

a then-unknown band called Royal Blood. Emails were sent and phone calls were made, until two unassuming Brighton lads – bassist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher – were asked to dig about in their merch box to find one, size medium. They were a little confused.

“Why do they need one?” asked Mike.“Because Matt wants to wear it on the Main

Stage,” came the reply.“Shit!” was the next word out of his mouth.

The news, welcome though it was, presented Royal Blood with something of a problem. They didn’t actually have any merch: no posters, no hoodies and definitely no T-shirts. A mate was hastily pressed into action. A T-shirt was sent to Worthy Farm, address: the Pyramid Stage. That night, as Matt provided the backbeat behind a headlining set at the most famous music festival in the world, he did so wearing a one-off, bespoke and freshly pressed T-shirt namechecking a then-unheralded Brighton two-piece.

“It was unbelievable,” says Ben. “But the problem was that nobody had any idea who we were! For us, it was amazing. Everyone else probably thought Royal Blood was a clothing label or something.”

However, if things keep happening to Royal Blood at the rate they’re currently happening, that won’t be the case for much longer.

ike and Ben have known each other for years. They met on the south coast gigging circuit – Mike was

then a keyboardist in a succession of local bands, while Ben was a drummer who could occasionally turn his hand to the guitar.

It was heavy rock that inspired them both – Mike was particularly in thrall to the sounds of Led Zeppelin, Jeff Buckley and Queens Of The Stone Age. But heavy rock didn’t always pay the bills. Wedding bands, on the other hand, did. So in hotel conference rooms and marquee parties, you might once have found the members of Royal Blood knocking out Come On Eileen to massed ranks of pissed uncles, proud dads and blushing brides. Lionel Richie songs, Mike says, were a favourite. Mike began tinkering with the bass rather than keyboards, and joined a four-piece band that became a three-piece soon after.

“So I made my sound bigger,” he says. “I started stringing [effects] pedals together. There was a lot of experimenting, really, with various amps. I always liked the idea of being the loudest person in the room.”

It has led to the bass sound he has now: a monstrous wall of heavy thunder and rolling noise. He says it works best with cheap basses.

“Well, you can do it with more expensive ones,” he says, “but mine are, like, £230 and that just seems to be the best option.”

And with the sound of the apocalypse booming from his amps, and no room for guitars in the mix, Mike knew there was only one more thing he needed. One day at the tail end of 2012, he picked up his friend Ben from a flight. He told him that he’d secured a gig the following night at a local bar in Worthing. He also mentioned that it would be useful if Ben could make it, since he was playing drums. They had one rehearsal the following afternoon, and that was it.

“We decided to blag it,” says Mike. “We met up for an hour, went through everything, and the gig went really well. All our mates came down. That first gig was when we knew it was something special.”The sound Royal Blood created – and have

honed since – takes in their influences: it has the rhythmic power of QOTSA, the hard rock blues licks of Led Zeppelin, Mike’s Jeff Buckley-inspired howl and yet also something that’s

MEET ROYAL BLOOD, FOLKS. THEY PLAY DRUM AND BASS (NOT THAT KIND). THE ARCTIC MONKEYS LOVE THEM. THEY’RE ABOUT TO RELEASE A MONSTROUS ALBUM. AND THEY’RE GOING TO BE BLOODY HUGE…

22 kerrang!

WORDS: TOM BRYANT PHOTOS: PAUL HARRIES

“everyone THoUGHT royAL BLooD WAS A CLoTHInG LABeL!”BEN THATCHER

BLOODinREIGN

kerrang! 23

ike is sardonic with a dry sense of humour, while Ben is very affable and easy-going. They say they’re opposites in

many senses. Mike says he is chaotic, describing himself as “a paper bag blowing in the wind”. Ben is the organised one who, Mike says, is forever chasing after him to keep him under control.

“It works with the two of us,” says Mike. “We may as well keep things simple.”

And as much as they make an odd couple, so odd things have been happening to them of late. Since signing with Warners, they have found that their phone rings with the strangest requests. One morning, they were asked to fly to Miami to play a show with the R&B star, Jason Derulo. Another day, they found themselves playing with Coldplay in a pub.“Things are on the slide for them, obviously,

since they’re now playing pubs,” deadpans Mike. “No, it was a Christmas party. I don’t think they’d heard of us, though I insisted that they should have done. I got so drunk that I don’t remember anything from the night – in fact, I’m convinced it didn’t even happen.”

But it points to the fact that things are very much happening for Royal Blood. Next comes a gig in support of Arctic Monkeys’ May spectacular at Finsbury Park – “unbelievable”, says Ben – before their debut album is released. And, if they stay true to their rule, a year of fun lies ahead.

There’s just one thing to sort out before they take 2014 by storm – they’ll want to make sure they’ve finally got some merch. ROYAL BLOOD ARE ON TOUR NOW – SEE ThE GIG GUIDE FOR DETAILS

“everyone THoUGHT royAL BLooD WAS A CLoTHInG

WHERE DOES ROYAL BLOOD’S BRAND OF NOISE COME FROM? LET’S ASK MIKE KERR, SHALL WE?

JEFF BUCKLEY“He’s God, basically. He’s an incredible musician and his ability to sing like an angel and the Devil in the same song is incredible. You can hear Robert Plant in his voice. They’re who I aspire to be like.”

LED ZEPPELIN“The vocals drew me into Led Zeppelin and the drums drew Ben in. And then there are the riffs, too. Ah, it’s all of it really. Come on, it’s Led Zeppelin – the best band in the world.”

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE“This is the band that convinced me I could sing. Before them, I was always in the shadows playing keyboards. I didn’t realise you could do rock music like that.”

JACK WHITE“Ben got me into Jack White. He can do anything – he can play in a two-piece, but he can also front The Dead Weather from behind a drum kit!”

DAVE GROHL“He’s another guy who’s a singer, a guitarist and a drummer. It’s inspiring to see passionate musicians who aren’t scared of turning their hand to something that isn’t their first instrument!”

BLOODi t ’s in theirindefinably their own. As they gigged across the south coast, so

their reputation spread on music blogs. “It was weird but very nice to be talked about, as we had never experienced that before,” says Mike.

They had only one rule as they gigged. “It was to have fun,” says Mike. “If this ever becomes not fun, then we’ve missed the point. As soon as we decided to just enjoy ourselves, everything started happening for us.”

Slowly, their reputation spread in underground circles, until the very-much-overground Warner Bros. Records caught wind of them and signed them up. The rest of 2013 was spent writing and recording their debut album, and it was then that they really firmed up their riff-and-roll sound. Impressively, that entire sound is created by just one bass and Ben’s hammering drums. In fact, that was something they were very adamant about as they recorded.

“It’s just the two of us. We wanted to make sure that the recordings reflected what we do live,” says Mike. “It would have been very easy to stick a guitar on the recording – but then we wouldn’t have been able to do that live. We stick to our guns on that one – we think it’s important.”

And if one thing’s for sure, the decision is paying off.

Royal Blood (from left ): Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher. God, that was easy…

ROyAL BLOODBLOOD