Royal Blood Are Back on the Road…and They Sound Like They Mean It

After two years away from the live circuit, Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher have spent the summer reminding people exactly why the Brighton-formed duo are so good at making two people sound like something considerably larger.

Royal Blood are properly back.

Now the return has a record attached to it. Dead Company, Royal Blood’s fifth studio album, arrives on November 13, with the band heading out across the UK shortly afterwards for a run of headline dates. The album has already produced two new tracks, with Ten Over Ten followed this month by Swallow The Bomb.

And if the new material is anything to go by, this isn't a quiet reintroduction.

The band have been using the months leading up to the album to get themselves back in front of people, playing a series of smaller shows before appearing at Reading Festival in August. Their secret set there drew a huge crowd, a slightly different proposition from the rooms they were playing when Royal Blood were first starting out.

For Kerr, getting back onstage has been part of the point of making the new record in the first place. Speaking backstage at Reading, he described Dead Company as “pretty relentless”, explaining that the songs were written with the stage in mind. Thatcher similarly described the record as bringing back some of the energy of their first album, but with everything they've learned since then.

That makes the upcoming tour particularly interesting.

Royal Blood aren't returning to tiny rooms, but they've also opted for a relatively focused run of UK dates rather than disappearing straight back into the festival and arena circuit. The tour begins at The Prospect Building in Bristol on November 24, less than two weeks after the album's release.

From there, the duo head to Newcastle's O2 City Hall, Manchester's O2 Apollo and Glasgow's Barrowland Ballroom, before continuing into December with shows in Wolverhampton, London at The Grand Hall, Olympia, and finally a homecoming show at Brighton Centre on December 4.

The Brighton date feels like an appropriate place to finish.

Royal Blood's story has always been closely tied to playing live. Kerr and Thatcher formed the band after reconnecting in Brighton, and their rise from small venues to headline stages happened at a pretty remarkable pace. Their first album went straight to Number One in the UK, while the pair have since built a reputation for turning a bass, drums and an unhealthy amount of volume into something that can fill considerably bigger spaces.

There's also something fitting about the timing of this particular comeback.

Back To The Water Below arrived in 2023. Then came the pause. Now they're back with a record they've deliberately built around the physicality of playing it live.

The first two tracks suggest they're not particularly interested in easing themselves back into things either.

Ten Over Ten arrived in August, followed by Swallow The Bomb in September. The latter made its live debut during the band's summer shows before receiving its official release, giving fans an early glimpse of how the new material sits alongside the older catalogue. By the time Royal Blood walk onto that stage in Bristol, Dead Company will have had a little time to settle in.

Then comes the real test: seven UK rooms, thousands of people and a set built around a record the band say was made to be played live.

Royal Blood have spent the last couple of months getting the engine running again.

Now they're taking it out on the road.