They’ve reinvigorated rock with the biggest album for years, yet endearingly, as Tim Hughes discovers, Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher are as surprised as everyone else

In a year dominated by saccharine singer-songwriters, bland commercial pop and the trite warblings of Coldplay, Royal Blood burst upon the music scene with a refreshing force 10 blast of primal fury.

Their sound has the fury of a polar bear with a sore head discovering a parking ticket on his iceberg.

Hailing from the genteel Sussex seaside town of Worthing, bassist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher trade in emotionally wracked vocals, roaring bass, intricate melodies and some truly terrifying drums.

Their brand of metal references everyone from Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters and Nirvana right back to British Heavy Metal, Sabbath and Led Zep, and its popularity proved one of the big musical surprises of the year.

Forming in 2012, their eponymous album, released in August, debuted at number one, making it the highest charting rock album for three years. It has already shifted more than 150,000 copies in the UK alone and has done similarly well overseas, topping the charts in Ireland and occupying Top 10 positions in Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and on Billboard’s Top Rock Albums. In much of the rest of Europe it hit the Top 20.

A Mercury nomination was inevitable; the judges’ failure to award it to them unforgivable. What is harder to swallow is that Royal Blood’s sound is purely created by just two people.

“It’s very natural, how it all came about,” says Ben. “We are good friends and our friendship was the core of the music.”

Mike agrees. “Ben was the first person I wanted to start a band with,” he says. “We didn’t even consider adding another member. It’s just a two-piece by default.”

Yet, they argue, being a duo forces them to find ever more inventive methods to bring their ideas to life. “We seem to resist every opportunity to do something the easy way and instead come up with a more creative solution,” says Mike.

“If it gets to a point where we think, how can we progress or can we go even larger, I’d like to think that there’s another creative solution rather than expanding the line-up with additional musicians.”

He describes the pair’s sound as the result of “three amps and a secret code of pedals” played on a collection of £220 bass guitars. Despite shelling out on more expensive equipment, he found it couldn’t match the power of the cheaper alternatives.

The album was recorded at Rockfield Studies in Monmouth.

“We just wanted to go in, play the best songs we could, then pick the 10 best ones and make a really strong record,” says Mike.

“My favourite is the last one we wrote, called Better Strangers. We took it to the studio in pieces really, spent a day recording it, and it’s come out as the best. I feel like it really sums up the band’s sound, and, lyrically, it’s the strongest.

Ben says: “My favourite to play live is probably Little Monster just because we get a good response from the crowd.”

They get a chance to test that response when they hit the O2 Academy Oxford on January 8, for a gig rescheduled from last month, which could, even at this early stage, well prove to be 2015’s best.

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The show will be followed by dates in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, before returning to the UK, and follows a year which has seen them leap up the spectrum of venues.

Ben says: “The tour we did back in February was our first headline tour, and selling out those venues of 200 people blew my mind.

“It’s a bit overwhelming at stages when you realise you haven’t doing this for very long – and what you were doing a year ago.

“But every gig is the same for us; we just do what we do and just play as hard as we can and enjoy ourselves as much as we can.”

Mike also admits to being taken aback by the band’s ascent: “We did a Bar Fly show as our first London show, our second London show was Brixton Academy, and our third London show was supporting the Arctic Monkeys in front of 30,000 people. That growth has been mental.

“After the first tune you play, though, it doesn’t matter if it’s in front of two people or 30,000. You are just going back to what we love doing which is having fun playing music.”

Royal Blood
O2 Academy Oxford
January 8
Tickets £12 from ticketweb.co.uk