Following the release of Royal Blood‘s 2017 sophomore album How Did We Get So Dark?, Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher were met with a lot of questions of, “Well, what’s next?” While Dark lived up to the hype of the duo’s 2014 self-titled album, it felt very much like an extension of its predecessor’s sound.

Four years later, Royal Blood rages back with Typhoons, marking the band’s first real shift in sonic direction. While the album keeps the core of Kerr’s heavy, distorted bass riffs and Thatcher’s thunderous drums intact, it also embraces a more dance-influenced style, inspired by the likes of Daft Punk and Justice.

As frontman Mike Kerr tells ABC Audio, Typhoons turned out to be something of a skeleton key that unlocked that pesky “What’s next?” question not just for right now, but in the long term, as well.

“In my head, I can see the next three albums,” Kerr shares.

In the past, Kerr says he and Thatcher prided themselves on “thriving off limitation,” but they realized that they didn’t want that to solely define Royal Blood.

“We’d got to the point where we had proven to ourselves, and to other people, that we can do a lot on our own,” Kerr says. “But we didn’t want that to be the point of the band…The point of the band is to make the best songs we can write, and make the best music possible come out of two speakers in front of us.”

He adds, “I think as soon as we kind of unshackled ourselves from that kind of self-imposed curse, then it allowed us to see a future.” 

Typhoons is out today. It includes the singles “Trouble’s Coming,” “Typhoons,” “Limbo” and “Boilermaker.”

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