How Did We Get So Dark?

There's no denying that Royal Blood is, at least in some small way, indebted to Queens of the Stone Age (QOTSA), who played a key role in pioneering the sound that has made the English blues rock duo so famous. The muscular bass riffs, earth-shaking drums beats, and crooning vocals that have become Royal Blood's trademark would undoubtedly sound right at home on an album like Rated R or Songs for the Deaf.

With this in mind, one can't help but wonder if QOTSA's decision to release "The Way We Used To Do," their first new single in nearly four years, on June 15th may have been partially motivated by a desire to steal some of the thunder generated by Royal Blood's highly anticipated sophomore album, How Did We Get So Dark? We'll probably never know for sure, but it certainly does seem to be just a little too fitting to have been entirely coincidental.

In any case, the musical similarities between Royal Blood and QOTSA are certainly no harder to pick out on So Dark than they were on the two-piece band's eponymous 2014 debut; in fact, QOTSA's influence on Royal Blood's sound is perhaps even more apparent now that it was three years ago. It may be that I'm reaching here, or perhaps I've just spent way too much time listening to both of these bands' albums, but in my opinion, there are at least three moments on So Dark that bear more than just a passing resemblance to sound-bytes that I've already heard on several different QOTSA albums.

The first, and, in my opinion, most obvious conjuring of a classic QOTSA moment comes fairly late in the album, approximately 3:26 into the plodding "Don't Tell". Although Royal Blood's "I swear I won't tell" lyric isn't quite a verbatim copy of QOTSA's "Don't tell..." at the end of "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret" from 2000's Rated R, the fact that the phrases are uttered as the last lines of both songs, combined with Kerr's and Homme's swooping deliveries of the final "tell", makes for some hard to ignore sonic similarities between the two moments. Unintentional? Maybe. But reminiscent nonetheless? Most definitely.

The second of the three "deja entendu" moments on So Dark comes 1:33 into the groovy "Hook, Line, and Sinker", which is arguably the strongest and most original song on the new Royal Blood album. The moment in question, which would likely stand out to even the most casual QOTSA fan, is beautifully simple: a brief but striking break in the careening bass line and soaring vocals, during which a single sound, namely four resounding beats on a jam block, is heard.

Although the jam block is obviously not a trademarked QOTSA instrument, the moment is undeniably reminiscent of the intro to QOTSA's smash hit "Little Sister", which also consists of a brief silence punctuated by four jam block beats. In this particular instance, the parallels between the two clips are so clear that one must almost assume that what we're hearing is Royal Blood's unvoiced acknowledgment of QOTSA's influence on their music.

The third and final instance where the "Royals of the Stone Age" are on proud display comes in the dying seconds of "Sleep," the haunting last song on How Did We Get So Dark? In this case, the moment in question comes not from the vocal or drum tracks, but rather from the bass riff. Much like the opening to "Keep Your Eyes Peeled" from QOTSA's 2013 ...Like Clockwork, the outro to "Sleep" is driven by a slowly repeating, rock bottom bass note that succeeds in creating a deliciously ominous mood in both the QOTSA and Royal Blood albums.

Once again, the placement of these moments in their respective albums (one at the very beginning and the other at the very end), combined with their unmistakably alike sonic structures, makes it difficult to imagine that Royal Blood did not draw at least some inspiration from QOTSA when crafting this song.

In spite of the three moments discussed above and QOTSA's readily apparent influence on Royal Blood's overall style, How Did We Get So Dark? still holds its own as a solid album in its own right, even if it's not quite as groundbreaking as their 2014 debut. In fact, after my initial obsessions with both So Dark and Villains, which QOTSA released about two months after Royal Blood, I must admit that I now find myself revisiting the bass-driven grooviness of the former much more often than the increasingly pop-influenced desert rock of the latter.

Have the students become the masters? Perhaps. But nonetheless, a debt is still owed. And as Royal Blood prepares to join QOTSA on tour for a string of shows in May 2018, I can't help but wonder if the twosome from Brighton will come to realize that the answer to the question-title of their second album might be something along the lines of: "with a little help from Queens of the Stone Age."