Mike Kerr: Putting Bass Front & Center With Royal Blood

How disco, costume parties, and new-found sobriety influenced Royal Blood’s new album, 'Typhoons'

Mike Kerr: Putting Bass Front & Center With Royal Blood

How disco, costume parties, and new-found sobriety influenced Royal Blood’s new album, 'Typhoons'

In two perfect words, Howard Stern once summed up what you might be thinking after watching a Royal Blood performance. The British duo had just thrashed their way through a live rendition of “Figure It Out” on his radio show. As the dust still hurtled around the room, shaken up by Kerr’s multiple speaker cabinets and Thatcher’s six crash cymbals, Howard spat out the words: “Holy mackerel.” It’s the reaction most people have to the unapologetic racket that bass player and vocalist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher manage to produce as a duo. Kerr has unearthed a way to wield his bass guitar as if it were an entire band, and Royal Blood’s two-part punchline certainly wasn’t lost on Stern. Nor many others in the music industry; Dave Grohl booked them to open for Foo Fighters after watching their Glastonbury performance, and Jimmy Page declared, “They’re going to take rock into a new realm”after seeing them perform in 2014. Six years on from that Howard Stern Sho
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Vicky Warwick   By: Vicky Warwick

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