If Ben Thatcher and Mike Kerr of Royal Blood wince at the suggestion that they're rock stars, it doesn't stop them from getting off a trans-Atlantic flight in the wee hours of the morning and finding the nearest party.
And it sure doesn't stop them from giving a damn entertaining interview!
The drums and bass power duo from Brighton, England, dropped by "Out of the Box" with Jonathan Clarke to talk about their new album, How Did We Get So Dark?, their massive sound and their years of hard work on the road.
The pair discussed what it was like to catch Jimmy Page's ear and get his support early, watching Kerr's mother and father hang out with Dave Grohl in Queens and having Lars Ulrich take them on a tour of San Francisco and.
"That was a well good night," Kerr says, of the Metallica drummer's impromptu tour of his home city. "His girlfriend was driving -- we drove over Golden Gate bridge. I had my head out the roof with a beer in one hand and a [cigarette] in the other...and I thought, 'Why isn't anyone filming this?' It felt...iconic."
Kerr says the band named the album How Did We Get So Dark? after completing a song of the same name, which he says they slaved over for almost the album's entire writing process.
"It just hung around like a bad smell," he says of the song. "It started off as a lyric and I remember every time picking up the bass, writing a tune, I just tried to get that lyric in there. It never had a home really. It was the very last thing we did -- literally the last recording we made...I remember, like, finishing the writing of it in the studio and hearing it back after it was mixed, it was like we didn't write it in a way."
The duo also talked about how they seem to have solidified the "Royal Blood sound" with this, their second full-length.
"I always wanted it where we could play one note and you could go, 'That's Royal Blood,' you know?" Kerr said.
Check out the full interview above!
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Here's the official music video for Royal Blood's "Lights Out":