On Royal Blood‘s new album, Back to the Water Below, the band continues to experiment and tinker with their sound after they took an unexpected turn into dance-influenced music with their last record, 2021’s Typhoons. Speaking with ABC Audio, frontman Mike Kerr shares how making Typhoons opened the duo’s eyes to different avenues they could pursue with future music.
“It freed us up to not let our limitations kind of hold us back,” Kerr says.
”Typhoons just invited the right amount of extra layers and production, and it broadened the palette,” he adds. “And I think we kind of walked into [Back to the Water Below] with that same palette in our hand.”
Not only that, but Royal Blood felt freer to select and combine the colors on that palette in different ways. As a result, Back to the Water Below is perhaps Royal Blood’s most dynamic and diverse-sounding record.
“[An album] doesn’t have to be all one thing,” Kerr muses. “That was quite liberating for us, to kind of have all these different gears and use all of them.”
Overall, Kerr felt “empowered” to keep experimenting with Back to the Water Below coming off of Typhoons, which helped reinforce why he wanted to make music in the first place.
“I felt like, ‘You know what? We can do whatever we want as long as we like it,'” Kerr says. “That mantra is the same as it was at the beginning, and it shouldn’t be any different now. It should be an indulgent affair.”
Back to the Water Below is out now.
Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.