Royal Blood announce new album, share groovy new single, Typhoons

British modern rockers Royal Blood have unveiled the title track from their forthcoming third album, Typhoons.

You can check out the song, which is propelled by singer-bass guitar player Mike Kerr’s distorted low-end riffs and drummer Ben Thatcher’s taut beats, above.

Regarding the new album, the duo have said Typhoons marks a return to their roots, when they had made music influenced by Daft Punk, Justice and and Philippe Zdar of Cassius.

 “We sort of stumbled on this sound, and it was immediately fun to play,” Kerr said. “That’s what sparked the creativity on the new album, the chasing of that feeling.”

Royal Blood's new album is called Typhoons

(Image credit: Warner Bros.)

He continued, “It’s weird, though - if you think back to Figure it Out [from their 2014 self-titled debut] it kind of contains the embryo of this album. We realized that we didn’t have to completely destroy what we’d created so far; we just had to shift it, change it. On paper, it’s a small reinvention. But when you hear it, it sounds so fresh.”

Earlier in 2020 Kerr spoke to Guitar World and explained why he decided to play bass rather than guitar. “I never thought about the guitar,” he said. “I thought the sound I got out of the bass was cool, and everybody plays guitar, so what’s new about that?"

He continued, "There’s less to discover on the guitar, less to explore. I didn’t think there were many bass players with a cool sound, so why not give it a go?”

Typhoons is out April 30 via Warner Bros., and is available to preorder now.

Richard Bienstock

Rich is the co-author of the best-selling Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion. He is also a recording and performing musician, and a former editor of Guitar World magazine and executive editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine. He has authored several additional books, among them Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the companion to the documentary of the same name.