Royal Blood is back with “Trouble’s Coming,” the lead single from the band’s upcoming third album. The track is a bit of a left turn for the U.K. duo — made up of vocalist/bassist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher — thanks a sound influenced by dance music.

As Kerr tells ABC Audio, recording “Trouble’s Coming” “ignited” him and Thatcher to understand what kind of album they wanted to make.

“We had written a lot of songs before ‘Trouble’s Coming,'” Kerr explains. “I think, good songs in their own right, but I think we were really looking for something that felt like a step forward for us, and we had no interest in repeating ourselves.”

“It made much more colorful music,” he adds of the dance influence. “It felt like a step forward, but it didn’t feel like we lost anything.”

Once they had recorded “Trouble’s Coming,” Kerr and Thatcher realized how similar rock and dance music can be.

“I think before, we had a lot of these influences that we were almost censoring from our music,” Kerr says. “We didn’t feel like it really fit into our world, or it wasn’t really allowed.”

This time around, though, Royal Blood aimed to “get out of our own way” and embrace those influences and fit them into their existing foundation. More importantly, Kerr found it simply “felt good” to be playing this faster style.

“To play riffs at that tempo is brilliant, and especially over those kind of straighter beats,” Kerr says. “Almost every AC/DC song has a straight beat, and it gives the riff this room to kind of cut and chop over the top, almost, like, dance across the top.” 

Royal Blood’s third album is due out spring 2021.

By Josh Johnson
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