The NME Awards tour has been stalking it’s way through the country recently, culminating at the Brixton Academy tonight. I went to the Bristol gig last night and was rewarded with a delightfully diverse line up in the form of Circa Waves, Royal Blood, Temples and Interpol. Obviously it’s way too late to urge you guys to get tickets, but I just wanted to draw attention to one of the acts as they blew me away:
Royal Blood
These two guys absolutely killed their set with five or so songs, each as aurally bombastic as the last. Obvious highlights were their respective singles Little Monster and Out of the Black, the latter hammering home the set perfectly. The frontman Mike kindly introduced us to the rest of the band…Ben, I was awed by the amount of noise (and variety of said noise) these two guys made by themselves. They are just fantastic purveyors of heavy and sinister rock, a marriage of two of my favourite properties. I just love Ben’s brutal percussion married to Mike’s guitar and that both instruments fight their way into the spotlight as well as working together. Just awesome stuff.
Royal Blood have only just surfaced onto my radar, but have been picked up by the likes of Zane Lowe so I’m glad they’re getting the exposure. The music this duo makes is right up my street and if you also want more hard and heavy rock in your life look no further.
The other acts were great as well. Interpol completely rinsed their set, but who’s surprised? ‘Take you on a Cruise’ was absolutely sublime and if by some small chance you haven’t heard of Interpol go check that song out. Temples strolled out and blasted us with their Psychadelic wares, whilst I am not a great fan of that stuff they were excellent musicians and performers. The songs they played were interesting and well constructed with plenty of variety (my main sticking point with the genre). Finally Circa Waves also put in a stellar performance, especially their drummer who I thought was brilliant, their songs Stuck in my Teeth and Good for Me particularly were particularly great.
Overall an amazing night.
ShmashBOT 