What emotion do you feel about a new Royal Blood album? Apathy? Boredom? Befuddlement at how such a profoundly unimpressive act have hoodwinked the general public into extending their 15 minutes yet again? Given that nothing they’ve done since their debut would do better than half marks, it’s likely a combination of the three.
It’s Royal Blood’s own naivety that’s gotten them in this position, seeming to believe that they’ve got indefinite mileage. Maybe it felt that way in 2014 when they were new and fresh, and no one considered the stark limitations of bass-and-drums-only rock music until How Did We Get So Dark? made them abundantly clear. Ever since, there’s been this insane amount of hubris to Royal Blood. They clearly know they need to do more, but don’t want to go too far out of their way. Thus, neither Typhoons’ electronics nor Back To The Water Below’s pianos and gentler compositions stuck, and Royal Blood have proudly returned back to the corner they’re so tightly painted into.
As a result, it’s impossible to go into Dead Company from a place of outright hope. Historically, a back-to-basics approach has been where Royal Blood are best, but it won’t have gotten less ephemeral over time. More broadly speaking, any goodwill towards them has been reduced to cinders after their less-than-glowing track record. Therefore, it says mountains when Dead Company opens with its title track, a cut above where they have been, yet as stock-standard as Royal Blood songs get.
It comes back to that idea of Royal Blood’s naivety. To them, this is how rock ‘n’ roll goes, where the raw, unmolested wonder of real instruments reaps rewards no matter what. This isn’t basic or underdeveloped; it’s real music! Granted, Dead Company is certainly better than their last couple of albums, but that’s down more to their additional crippling faults, not the inspiration baked into Royal Blood. They’re as stuck as ever, having walled off the avenues towards expansion and relying on a sound that was reaching the end of its wick in 2017.
The couple of bright spots that Dead Company presents do help alleviate some of the torpor, thankfully. Not by much, but by the standards of Royal Blood, the more erratic, nervy Swallow The Bomb, Mother Never Told You and Tapping Out are a little more exciting. You could also throw in Ten Over Ten’s more aggressive drum patterns into that, even if they don’t tend to last. To hazard a guess, those are the moments that Royal Blood believe constitute their baseline, in the same way that Out Of The Black did many moons ago. A couple of problems with that, though—a) there’s overwhelming evidence to the contrary across their entire catalogue, and b) those moments are the minority on this very album.
Purely in a vacuum, Dead Company is not the gnashing, two-headed tiger-beast that its cover portrays. By virtue of the band that Royal Blood are, it can’t be. They don’t have the reach to get there, both in musical diversity and an existence that’s purely rooted in mainstream rock. Adventure or experimentation simply can’t coexist with their model, and the duo accepting that makes the overall experience feel that much more suppressed. Take the appropriately-named final track The Closer, for instance, and how it wants to be this looming, spiralling, Muse-esque epic, only to be hamstrung by how narrow its space to operate in is. The fact that this is, once again, a completely levity-free affair doesn’t help. You’d think, five albums in, that Mike Kerr would’ve realised that rockstar stoicism doesn’t have the effect that he wants, and only dampens his work all the more.
In truth, there’s little more to say about Dead Company. Royal Blood on factory reset just doesn’t inspire all that much. And yet, that won’t deter them, or bring about anything that’s genuinely new and exciting. If we’re lucky, there might be another small add-on next time, to pay fealty to creative intent without besmirching the sanctity of their inspirationally skeletal rock music. But even as it is, it’s not worth getting up in arms about. Like every post-debut Royal Blood album, this will fade away to nothingness before a second thought can even be given. That’s what happens when even one of your better works falls on such a ruthlessly ungenerous curve.
For fans of: The White Stripes, The Black Keys, Nothing But Thieves
‘Dead Company’ by Royal Blood is released on 6th November on Warner Music.
Words by Luke Nuttall
