Royal Blood lead singer Mike Kerr stated in an interview, “A boilermaker is a horrible, horrible drink. It’s a shot of whiskey (dropped) in a beer… When you’re drinking them, you know things are going wrong.” Strange then the juxtaposition of the boisterous fan-favorite track Boilermaker (first introduced during their 2019 European tour) up against this ill-flavored god-damning drink that Kerr found to be his ‘savior’ from depression.

“I was looking for some kind of savior,
Someone still counting on my worst behavior,
Knew there would be trouble,
With devil eyes and magic hands”

After touring extensively with alternative rock band Queens of the Stone Age (QOTSA), he made a friend of the band’s lead singer Josh Homme who subsequently went on to produce newly-sober Herr’s Boilermaker track for Royal Blood’s new album ‘Typhoons’. This resulted in a track so staggeringly (literally) exceptional it far exceeding the remaining songs anticipated for the album, thus requiring further reworking of said tracks to close the caliber gap (resulting in a riotous, righteous, album easily rating a rip-roaring 8/10).

“I’m all mixed up… (yeow yeow)…
Head like a cocktail shaker,
Living in a house like an old bodega,
Got the odds looking in my favor,
Standing at the bottom of a boilermaker”

The video, directed by Liam Lynch (of previous QOTSA video fame) is a pleasure-free cruise through the beer-whisk-ied waters of a boilermaker life. An awakening where one digs oneself out of bed and stoutly drags one’s zombified-body through a new day’s grindery loaded with more boilermaker delicious-less-ness. A soundtrack of guitar-drenched-staccato-drums following a lurching zombie-mob leading to a bounteous-chorus with a cheering god-razed lightening-threatening demon-skull. The video, resplendent with an apparent drug-fest of party imagery finally finds the protagonist trapped in hell and then locked in a cage, before blessedly blacking-out back to sleep again.

An alcoholic Groundhog Day, where oncoming death never sounded so good.

• Royal Blood music can be bought here and from Apple here, listened to on Spotify here, and followed on Facebook here