Royal Blood – Spark Arena, 7 December 2023: Review

It has been a while since I have been in Spark Arena’s mosh pit, or any mosh pit at all for that matter, but Royal Blood sure came to throw down on a muggy Thursday night.

Radio Hauraki residents Racing were a good choice to support last night’s show. If Dad rock is a legit genre, Racing nails it.

The driven and familiar p-bass and humbucker tones from Daniel Barrett and Sven Pettersen over the ever-steady beat from drummer Izaak Houston slowly warm up the crowd of punters.

It is not until lead singer Ed Knowles screams the lyrics to modern Kiwi rock singalongs like Desire, Party Slow and Motel Pool that the crowd really loosens up.

It certainly took me a while to warm up to Racing, where at first, I thought they could have done with some more stage presence and another guitarist. The band well and truly ran wild towards the end of their set with long breakdowns and simple but punchy guitar solos, even whacking the guitar with a beer bottle for some extra feedback.

Very happy to be here tonight with you, says Ed Knowles.

Royal Blood have always been an interesting outfit, being only two dudes making music heavier than most typical four-piece bands produce.

The bass as an instrument and its role in the production, has been reinvented by Royal Blood’s front-man Mike Kerr.

I did not get a chance to check out his pedalboard, but he has clearly got an enormous rig to destroy the bass through.

The band is equally fronted by drummer Ben Thatcher, one of the strongest modern rock drummers I have yet seen.

It does not stop there for Thatcher. Multiple times during the concert he gets up, walks along the front of the stage, ominously stares, and points into the crowd and conducts no less than five mosh pits while Mike keeps the breakdown going with the song’s dirty and driven riffs.

Thatcher even climbed the fence and joined the mosh pit during the band’s hit Little Monster, somersaulting back onto the stage to please the audience with a huge drum solo.

Thatcher only said one thing during the entire show, and it was just before the last song. Ben grabs the microphone and tells the stadium to Get the fuck up!

I would have liked to hear more sophisticated lines from the band’s drummer. It would have been great if he had a microphone simply to fill the awkwardly long breaks between songs. Where Mike Kerr would be to the side of stage, swapping instruments or fiddling with his amp’s settings.

Regardless, the band deliver a hugely energetic set, this time accompanied by the latest addition to the band, Darren James, on keyboards and backing vocals.

It was his birthday, indicated by a cute Happy Birthday helium balloon and a stadium singing happy birthday to him. What a way to celebrate!

Darren would only accompany songs from the band’s latest album, which is arguably and understandably more filled out than their previous duo albums.

It gave a good range between fuzz-rock crowd-favourites off the band’s iconic debut self-titled album and their latest more explorative albums Typhoons and Back to the Water Below.

Royal Blood finished the night off strong with their most recognisable riffs.

Ten Tonne Skeleton and Figure It Out went down a treat as the encore and I must mention the lights delivered equal energy to the music during the entire show.

Koen Aldershof

Photography by Cris Zwaagdyk

Royal Blood

Racing