Royal Blood make it four chart-toppers in a row with Back To The Water Below as they head to Portsmouth Guildhall

And with last month’s release of their fourth album, Back To The Water Below, making it four number ones in a row, it seems the Brighton-based drum-and-bass (but not that drum-and-bass) duo remain on a roll.​

The band are currently on tour, with a sold-out date at Portsmouth Guildhall pending tonight (Friday, October 27).

The Guide caught up with drummer Ben Thatcher shortly after they had returned from a successful US tour. Regarding their continued run of number ones, he says: “It's pretty insane. The reason that we play music isn't about getting number one records, that's just absurd. It's a pretty amazing thing to reflect on, but we felt like we had already won when we finished recording the album, we were so happy with it and excited for people to hear it.

“The number thing is amazing, but it's not something we set out to do. We go out to challenge ourselves and be creative and write things that we enjoy playing live.”

Their 2021 album Typhoons opened up the band’s sound – bringing in more synths and electronic elements for the first time. Back… builds on that sonic palette.

"Typhoons was the first time that we did something that felt... not out of our comfort zone, because we love playing that kind of music… but it felt like we were challenging our fans and listeners.

“And it paved the way for this one because it felt like we had people on board with us, so that we could go out and do not just the four-four-two rock'n'roll that we're known for. We could branch out a bit with some different instruments.”

The piano is more to the fore as well – vocalist and bassist Mike Kerr was originally on keys in the pre-Royal Blood band he and Ben were in together.

"With our songwriting, we like to know that there's a song there first. A lot of them do start with the piano – Mike is a piano player, he never actually played the bass before joining the band. He picked up the bass for Royal Blood, basically.

“For the first two records we replaced all of those piano parts or whatever with basses, but with Typhoons we replaced the pianos with synths, and then on this one, we've kind of kept them in!”

Whereas the pair have always had a hand in producing their albums, this was the first time they entirely took the reins themselves.

"With our previous records we've always had a producing role in it. On the first one we didn't really know what we were doing, we were just writing music and our friend Tom Dalgety was recording it, and we felt he was a big part of that process so he did a co-production thing with us on that.

“When that was so successful, the next one was: who do we get for this? Because we could have anyone in the world now...

“It put a bit of pressure on us, because we didn't know what we were doing here. We know how to write songs but we didn't know how to get anyone else involved in what we do.

“Because Mike and I work so well together and we know what we want it to sound like or what we want from these songs, so when you get a third party involved it can kind of confuse things.

“I know that's a good thing to progress and you need to be pushed, but I think we already knew what we wanted to do and with Typhoons. Yes, we want to a few other people. We went to Josh (Homme, Queens of The Stone Age frontman) which was quite a natural thing because we were on tour with them and he became a friend of ours, and we thought it would be cool to work with him.

" And then we did a couple of tracks with (multi-Grammy and Oscar winning producer) Paul Epworth, but working with those guys was fairly early on in the Typhoons process and then we kind of took the reins ourselves for the rest of it.

“This latest one, it just felt very natural to do it ourselves. We felt equipped to do it.”

In the studio, it may just be the pair of them, but as their sound has expanded they have needed to call on help for the live show – as anyone who saw their barnstorming headline slot at Victorious Festival in 2021 would have seen.

“We have a friend of ours from Brighton called Darren (James) who we need to get in for the live show. Because we play everything live, we don't use any backing tracks or clicks, so the whole show is quite raw and we wanted to keep it that way.”

And just lately those live shows have ranged from an intimate album launch at Brighton’s Concorde 2, to supporting their friends Muse in stadiums and arenas.

"We just love playing music,” says Ben, “so any gig is great for us. I find that the more intimate ones, like The Concorde 2, they're kind of more nerve-wracking because you can see the whites of people's eyes. With a stadium you just rock up - and with the Muse shows it was so fun and so easy for us. Muse fans and ours crossover quite a bit, so we were playing to thousands of people and we knew that Muse were coming on after us, so there was no pressure on us. We just had to do our thing!”