Review Summary: Hook, riff and sinker
An uncanny desire for the revolution/renovation of rock music plagued its last years with both ends of the spectrum: false saviors that tried miserably to run with the prize but stumbled at their own influences, and bands that tried to renew their sonic pallette and got burned for it. Revivals are made, musical scenes are solidified by its rock patriotism, new bravados of testosterone are bursting out of the premise, and all that running down the rabbit hole with the question "did it really ever needed saving?".
I reviewed the first Royal Blood album when it came out defending that, yeah, it needed, and its messianic salvation was coming from underground music. I apologize for it.
Royal Blood aren't the saviors we need, but the ones we deserve, even if all that relationship of "saving grace" is a cliché created by stubborn metalheads that can't accept the genre's metamorphosis. And in "How Did We Get So Dark?", they just add pretty solid tracks to their catalogue that maintain its initial proposal of rocking, riff-oriented monsters that make you question if they really don't have guitars on it, and that's about it.
Well, it has its twists and turns, like the keyboards on the savage "Hole In Your Heart", one of the most effective tracks on the rocking factor, and "Don't Tell" that is clearly a blues tribute. But, like its best song, "How Did We Get So Dark?", doesn't let me lie, the best parts of the album are when it keep that dark aura which composed their previous best songs, pushing influences that work quite well, like the Queens of the Stone Age sound on this one.
And when it tries to reach for anthemic heights, it's when it's clear that they should tread lightly on these waters. Tracks like "Lights Out" and "I Only Lie When I Love You" are double edged knives that, while have some catchy instrumental factor, there is some obnoxious ones with its hooks that distract the listener from the real gold. But we also have another side that is composed by, no pun intended, careless songs that are just fine and don't have much to offer, like "She's Creeping".
In the end, you can't really say that they reinvented the wheel with this album, but they were never supposed to. Also it's not a carbon copy of the first album, it just enhanced some of its tricks even if it's more diverse, but a little less memorable. The riff machine may start to run dry in the next albums, but if the duo expand the variations that they touched on this album, they'll have interesting results. It's not about saving rock, it's just about rocking.
Recommended Tracks:
How Did We Get So Dark?
Hook, Line and Sinker
Hole in Your Heart
Sleep
