Label: Warner Records
Release Date: 24th September 2020
Rating: 8/10
"The song straddles the boundary between the harder rock sound we’ve come to expect from the band, and dance and disco music."
Three years after the release of their last album, How Did We Get So Dark?, Royal Blood have burst back onto the rock music scene with explosive new single ‘Trouble’s Coming’.
The track contains guitarist Mike Kerr’s signature distinctive bass guitar riffs, and they repeat throughout; Kerr describes it as “just like a heartbeat through the song that never stops”. This, combined with the band’s classic heavy drum beat, gives the track a steady, headbang-able rhythm.
The song is a grower, improving with each listen. There are synth lines and dancey embellishments on the main melody, which drummer Ben Thatcher admits previously mainly consisted of “only two elements."
Lyrically, Kerr calls the song “dark”, with lines such as “trouble's coming but I still don't know when”, and the repeated hook “if I could, then I would”, creating a sense of lack of control and uneasy anticipation. Recorded during the recent lockdown, the lyrics encapsulate Kerr’s internal struggle with “recurring mental nightmares”, with imagery of “demons”, “psychosis” and “cracks on the mirror” adding an edge of horror to the idea of inner turmoil.
This contrasts with the danceable sound of the track, with Thatcher’s “bombasticness” meaning that the duo “were on [their] feet the whole time” they were making it. Inspired by AC/DC, the song straddles the boundary between the harder rock sound we’ve come to expect from the band, and dance and disco music, with more “luxurious” production and more electronic elements.
The track represents a different, less-purely-hard-rock side to the band’s signature sound, suggesting an exciting change in sonics in their upcoming album, due to be released in spring. If this is anything to go by, we should be very excited about the next era of Royal Blood.
Words by Serafina Kenny.
27th September 2020.
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