ROYAL BLOOD – Tattoo Rock Parlour, Toronto – July 9, 2015

Photos and Review by: Darren Eagles

http://royalbloodband.com

Take a downtown tattoo shop, add a live stage, a conspicuous beer sponsor, a dash of hot Toronto summer, a few hundred eager fans and one of the UK’s biggest up and coming rock duo’s, and you get the bombastic sonic assault that was ROYAL BLOOD’s super intimate bar gig this past Thursday night.  Fresh off the stage as the opening act for Foo Fighters at a much larger venue earlier the same night, the heavy guitar and drum masters chose to invade the Tattoo Rock Parlour for a down and dirty, in your face rock show.

Drawing almost completely from their 10-song smash hit debut album, the band plowed through 9 of them, and added one of their b-sides in “One Trick Pony”.  The crowd clearly knew this show was special, one of those shows you tell people you attended years from now when the band regularly plays stadiums worldwide.  With fists pumping, heads banging and prolonged chanting the band name in-between songs, fans sweated it out with Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher in a perfect partnership.  Ben got up-close during an extended “Out of the Black” and went for a stage dive while Mike and a roadie laid on the stage and played a solo.  This is the kind of interaction bands like this lose as they hit the big time, which makes shows like this all the more special.

The 60-minute set was short, without filler, without an encore and left the crowd the way every rock band worth their salt should – wanting more.

Setlist:

Come On Over

You Can Be So Cruel

Figure It Out

Better Strangers

Little Monster

Blood Hands

One Trick Pony

Ten Tonne Skeleton

Loose Change

Out of the Black

Daddy Long Legs

Artwork for ‘Lowdown Ways’ by Daddy Long Legs

Benjamin Tod by Tim Duggan