In an NME exclusive interview, Royal Blood’s frontman Mike Kerr opens up about sobriety and Royal Blood’s new album. Enjoying success after Arctic Monkeys’ drummer wore the band’s t-shirt for their iconic Glastonbury set in 2013, Royal Blood’s self-titled debut album sold 66,000 copies in the first week, becoming one of the fastest-selling albums along with The Strokes, Arcade Fire and Linkin Park.

In retrospect, Kerr commented how the band may have suffered from anxiety in regards to expectation for their second record, ‘How Did It Get So Dark?‘.  ‘It just wasn’t normal‘, he stated, ‘The usual progression is that your career and your fans grow with you on a nice and gentle lead up, whereas for us it was straight to the top. We’d only just worked out how to be in a band. We’d played together for our whole lives, but the thing was successful as soon as we put it out.’

Indeed, after the end of their second tour, the singer’s touring life – including drinks, drugs and hangovers – made its way into his personal life: ‘The problem wasn’t what was happening; the problem was me,’ he said. ‘Being someone who didn’t want the party to stop meant that I didn’t stop the party when I got home. It’s like coming back to work but still thinking you’re on holiday in Ibiza, wearing a Hawaiian shirt while you cook a barbecue up in the office.’

‘Typhoons‘, out on April 30th, is Royal Blood’s third album, is the representation of Mike Kerr’s sobriety: ‘Sobriety was something I knew I had to do in order to make this record. This album or this band wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t have done this. It was all quite scary.‘ Indeed, four songs already came out, giving us a taste of the highly anticipated album: ‘it was like I had woken up from a coma and someone said, ‘Right, Mike, you’re in a band and it’s called Royal Blood – you play bass; these are the songs. Have fun!’