Quick and Dirty Drive-Through Concert Review: Royal Blood (April 19, 2022)

Date Night at Royal Blood concert (April 19, 2022) 🥰🩸

#datenight #royalblood @royalblood #rockconcert #prejippie #bloomingprejippie

Cleopatrick.

Opening act. Canadian. Grunge, two-person band; brooding, driving sound. Kinda dig it. Nirvana meets Panic at the Disco meets something bluesier. 👍🏽 Drummer is part rhythm and part hype-man and guitar player handles the transitions—by doing this guitar feedback loop—so that there’s no dead air as they sip water and segue into the next song. Angsty. Good. Grungy rock. 💥

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Royal Blood 🩸

I ALREADY knew they were formidable as a modern day harder rock duo—see our recent Musical Discoveries #5 —but seeing them live gave me a deeper look and listen into their artistry.

Royal Blood video

The first thing we noticed was the circular light rig, that spanned the ENTIRE perimeter of the stage. We KNEW that meant that the light show was going to be a pretty MAJOR factor in their show. —It was. (You can check out the video to see some glimpses of it https://bit.ly/royalbloodtdetroitvid ).

South By Southwest 2022

We also noticed the dual pedestals, which, as expected, was to showcase the bassist and the drummer. The lead vocalist and bassist had a rather spartan set up, while the drummer had a pretty mythical-looking rock kit with tons of cymbals and a HUGE Zildjian gong behind him. (See photo) —There was also a small keyboard perched on the side for those rare instances when a keyboard player would charge out onto the stage to handle a synth line and some background vocals.

Royal Blood drummer with gong

Nashville June 2021 blog post

And their performance DIDN’T disappoint. The lead singer pranced, posed, and played off the audience in his shimmery silver shirt, black skinny jeans, and Beatles-esque black boots. The drummer kept the rhythm hype and every now and then, pulled out that HUGE mallet to, literally, bang his gong. All THAT was showmanship at its best.

Travel Adventures

And previous to seeing them live, I had underplayed how much the songs reminded me of a Duran Duran vibe meets something much harder, but with the glam that the lead singer exuded, I could feel traces of George Michael in their musicality AND their stage show.

Johnatha Brooke

According to the singer, tonight was one of only 3 performances in Detroit, with THIS one being the biggest to-date. And we could feel it in the crowd that we sat among (in Loge 2). There were MANY in our age range—some with teenage sons in tow—but MOST seem to have come knowing many of the songs and were able to sing along to many of their catchy hooks.

Stromae

I will admit that Bruce and I were out for date night—had to choose between Johnatha Brooke (tomorrow night’s show) and this one—since it would have been hard to catch them both. (See Johnatha Brooke post here.) But thanks to Bruce playing his workout playlist every morning, I knew quite a few Royal Blood songs MYSELF, so that I DIDN'T feel like Left Out Lamont—Yep, check your Sanford and Son consumption to glean THAT one. —I was able to bounce around and sing the chorus to quite a few tracks. However, it was about 80% through the concert—when Royal Blood told the balcony to stand and dance with them—that I felt we needed to bounce out. You see, it was all fun to stand up and bounce around, but the floor felt as if it was bouncing too. 😳🤷🏽‍♀️🙄 —Yeah, there was a FULL ON mosh pit down in General Admission, so we had been counting our blessings…. —And I have seen ENOUGH footage of party balconies collapsing to realize that this would NOT be an item that I wanted to have checked off of a bucket list, so we took this cue to bounce out to the aisle and to head out for the evening. —What’s more is THIS IS a week night and I am either going to drag in tomorrow, or if it’s TOO late to get proper sleep, I am going to need to call in…..😬🤷🏽‍♀️