ROYAL BLOOD

Ten years ago this month The White Stripes unleashed their fourth album, Elephant. The mega-selling follow-up to their break-out hit White Blood Cells, it established the lo-fi rockers as one of the noughties’ most influential bands and inspired a wave of copyists to ditch sparkly production in favour of gritty, upfront blues-rock.

A decade on and The White Stripes influence can still be felt. In Brighton, hard-rocking duo Royal Blood have embraced Jack and Meg’s blueprint whole-heartedly with their fuzz-heavy odes to the blues pioneers of the thirties. Recent track “Figure It Out” is Robert Johnson re-imagined for the Facebook generation. An explosively heavy Zeppelin-esque stomper, it’s at the crossroads between the proto-metal of AC/DC and Black Sabbath and the electronic space-rock of Death From Above 1979.

Blurring the lines between the south coast of England and the Mississippi delta, Royal Blood are nothing short of incandescent. Their Soundcloud page hosts one song, but it’s enough. As exciting as Jack White’s era-defining “Seven Nation Army”, “Figure It Out” is contemporary rock ‘n’ roll at its most thrilling. It won’t be long before Royal Blood have their hands on The Black Keys‘ crown.

Words by Toby Rogers

Tipped by Ach Dhillon from Killing Moon