Four albums into their evolution and it's still a wonder that so much noise is generated by just two people.
Back to the Water Below follows 2021's slickly produced
Josh Homme outing,
Typhoons, and finds
Royal Blood in fine form, once again nailing that sweet spot between the swaggering sleaze of
Homme's band
Queens of the Stone Age and the fuzzed-out alternative of acts like
Muse and
Arctic Monkeys. Sticking to an in-house approach this time around,
Mike Kerr and
Ben Thatcher produced the album themselves, plucking the best from their varied influences and resulting in their most dynamic effort to date. On the heavy side, the towering "Mountains at Midnight" pummels and quakes, setting off a shockwave that rumbles through the strutting, blues-washed "Shiner in the Dark" and the effects-laden "Tell Me When It's Too Late," a head-swirling highlight that's both trippy and visceral. The biggest surprises on the album come in the form of midtempo breathers that echo
Radiohead ("Pull Me Through," "The Firing Line"), employing piano, atmospheric effects, and unfolding sonics that hint at a wider universe for the duo. They even lean into stadium-sized glam on the piano-backed gem "There Goes My Cool" and the epic closer "Waves." For fans in search of variations on their typical approach,
Back to the Water Below offers more than they've ever attempted before, shifting and slithering from extremes without sounding like ten copies of the same track. It's a welcome change of pace that finally finds them in growth mode, hinting at much more to come. ~ Neil Z. Yeung
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