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 Show performance, the twosome, often hailed as the “saviors of rock music,” have been enjoying the ongoing success that began when their self-titled debut album went double-platinum. They have firmly held onto the bull’s horns through various headlining tours, award ceremonies, and the recording of their sophomore album, How Did It Get So Dark? The duo now find themselves at album number three. Typhoons was born out of costume parties with Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, a writing technique Ben dubbed as “AC/Disco,” a global pandemic, and Kerr’s new-found sobriety. Mike cites the latter as the most crucial factor for him and shares, matter-of-factly, “I honestly don’t think I would have made an album had I not sorted out that side of my life. I was going nowhere.” He was in the middle of a recording trip with Homme, one of his teenage heroes, when it dawned on him that something had to shift for album three to emerge: “I was beginning to understand what it would take to make the record I wanted to make.” Kerr & Thatcher (photo by Mads Perch) Mike had taken a breather from the studio for a weekend trip to the home of neon-lit debauchery, Las Vegas. Staring into an espresso martini, he decided this would be his last brush with alcohol. His foresight of a future-gone-wrong imagined a life without music or his band, and his decision to throw in the towel was driven by the fear of losing them. The six-year party had finally come to a close, but it made way for Mike and Ben to create an album that sounded like one. Kerr describes the record as seeing Royal Blood “in color” for the first time. While their solid rhythm-section union is still the foundation of Royal Blood 3, they have dressed up this collection of songs with layers of dramatic synth sounds, string lines, female backing vocals, and vocoders. These additions nod to influences that haven’t yet been reflected in Royal Blood’s music — bands such as Daft Punk, Justic