Royal Blood tease 10th anniversary celebrations for self-titled debut album

Royal Blood have hinted that they’ll celebrate the 10th anniversary of their self-titled debut album next year.

The rock duo released ‘Royal Blood’ in August 2014. It debuted at Number One on the UK albums chart and was nominated for the Mercury Prize.

Now, the band have teased to NME in a In Conversion video chat about their new album, ‘Back To The Water Below‘, that they’ll mark the record’s milestone birthday. Ideas are still being worked out but there have been mentions of live, full-album play-throughs and perhaps a revisit of their original tour.

“We working out the best way to do that,” singer and bassist Mike Kerr told NME when asked about whether they’ll celebrate the album’s 10th year.

Drummer Ben Thatcher added: “We’ll definitely celebrate it though. Maybe a firework display with the music playing behind it and some drones.”

Asked in another interview by NME last month whether fans can expect an anniversary tour for ‘Royal Blood’, Kerr said: “It would be great to mark it by doing some kind of play-through honouring it, but I don’t think about it. It would be great to get back in the van and re-do the original tour. That would be funny.”

The Brighton duo were also asked about whether they’d step up to headline Reading & Leeds festival in 2024 to top off a year of celebrations. “That would be amazing,” replied Kerr. “I’m hoping we can ramp it up.”

Speaking about ‘Back To The Water Below’ in the NME In Conversion chat, Kerr said in response to the suggestion that their fourth record is “something of a return to their roots” that they didn’t overthink things; whatever the sound is on the new album is what felt right.

“When we play together, that’s all that’s required for it to be Royal Blood,” Kerr said. “If we want to go somewhere new, we just go for it.”

“We were basically always in agreement,” Kerr added of the creative process of working on the new album. “We very rarely have disagreements about the songs and if we do, it means it’s wrong and we move onto something else.”

“The chemistry is all you have,” he continued. “That’s the thing you have to cherish and if you push that to one side, it defeats the point of doing this.”