Royal Blood

Brighton heavy-rock duo winningly inject dancefloor euphoria.

Royal Blood, like T.Rex and Led Zeppelin in the ’70s, are critically ill-favoured, deemed too poppy for ‘serious’ consideration. Yet they remain the only British rock arrivistes to buck the 2010s’ synth-pop trend, and that upward curve will only steepen with this third LP, whose symbiosis of heaviosity and modernist accessibility verges on genius. Once decompressed from fame psychosis (Who Needs Friends reveals road-burnt paranoia), for this outing singing bassist Mike Kerr and sticksman Ben Thatcher resolved to assimilate their penchant for dance titans like Daft Punk and Justice. Cue synth textures around the fringes of Kerr’s ever-beefy riffing and Thatcher’s Bonzo wallop, to the point where Million And One all but bursts into a cover of Eye Of The Tiger. Funky as early-’80s Judas Priest, the title track and Trouble’s Coming will become era classics in flat-out overamplified party music.