Live Review: Royal Blood @ HBF Stadium

A few hours before they set foot onto the stage inside the HBF stadium, Royal Blood posted on their Instagram the quote “Perth, are you ready?”. It can be said that Perth were, in fact, more than ready.

Hometown heroes, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, opened up the show with an enchanting half-hour set of their greatest hits. The five-piece band originated by playing together in "an old horse barn in Leederville”, not far from the stadium itself. Although it would be expected that their rather unusual band name would be what makes them memorable, this couldn’t be further from the truth. A performance, which really should come with a potential whiplash warning, was so full of energy that it was easy to believe the lead singer, Jack McEwan, when he said that it was a “dream to play back in WA”.

A set filled with powerful guitar riffs and synchronised headbanging ended with calls for an encore that rang around the stadium, a display that is not normal for a support act. It is fair to say that the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, who described supporting Royal Blood as a “pleasure”, managed to rile up the audience enough to create an atmosphere perfect for the main act to make their grand entrance.

Royal Blood, originating from Brighton in the UK, are a duo made up of Mike Kerr on the bass/lead vocals and Ben Thatcher on the drums. The band were not only concluding their Australia/New Zealand tour in the HBF stadium but also their whole year. 2023 has been quite eventful for the pair, ranging from the release of new music to the controversy that surrounded their Radio 1 Big Weekend performance back in the UK in May. Having put that behind them, it was clear from the outset of this gig that they wanted to end the year with a bang.

Out of the Black, a single from the pair's self-titled debut album, kicked things off for the Western Australian audience. The song can be seen as a display of the band at its best as even the intro of the song shows off their seemingly natural synchronicity and trademark drum and bass sound, not to be confused with the genre of DnB. Towards the end of the song came a break where only Kerr was playing his bass, leaving Thatcher being able to interact with the crowd away from his drums. On this occasion, this interaction saw the drummer signalling to the crowd to part in two in a biblical fashion, allowing him to jump down from the stage and walk into the gap he had created.

For most of the night, the stage is only occupied by the two band members who manage to create a full sound that you would expect from a four-piece. The way that Kerr manages to use a combination of talent and pedal effects to achieve this means that for songs like Typhoons and Mountains at Midnight there is no need for anyone else. However, since 2021, the band have been joined by touring member, Darren James on synths/backing vocals, whose addition was introduced to compliment the more dance and electronic-oriented sounds of later albums.

Throughout the night, in every gap between songs, the crowd would chant “drum solo, drum solo, drum solo...” in an attempt to ignite Thatcher into one of his incredible displays of talent. Over the past decade of the band's existence within the mainstream, Thatcher has cemented himself as one of the greats of his generation on the drums, with his stage presence being his most notable skill. After a lot of teasing throughout the show, it was not until near the end that a solo drum piece was finally played. The wait was completely worth it and Thatcher managed to captivate the whole stadium into near silence for the full five minutes that he played alone for.

As predicted the final song to be played was the band's most popular hit, Figure it Out. As soon as the recognisable bassline started, a sea of phones went up in the air as most of the audience tried to capture a moment they could replay forever. Even though the energy in the stadium was at a ten out of ten throughout the whole night it seemed that during his song the crowd somehow managed to turn it up another notch.

As the final song ended, the pair bowed out together with one arm around eachother and the sound of Kerr’s bass guitar still ringing around the stadium. This signified the end of the gig and the end of Royal Blood’s time in Australia but the hope is that there will not be another five-year wait until the next time the Brighton band decides to come back.