So here we go. I know that the concert was almost a week ago, but honestly a week was the minimumI needed to recover my voice and finally admit that this fucking show happened…
Royal fucking Blood at the Olympia, opened by the brilliant Mini Mansions… Both acts were incredible even though the musical styles are COMPLETELY different!
Mini Mansions started playing Sherlock Holmes (sadly we could barely hear Tyler’s voice, I don’t know why), Monk, Heart of Glass, Freakout! and a few others that I can’t remember of. Then came Vertigo. By talking to some fans in the crowd, I realized that quite a lot of people discovered Royal Blood thanks to Arctic Monkeys. So when Michael Shuman announced Vertigo a big part of the few spectators who came early enough to see MM (French crowds aren’t that much into opening acts sadly…) reacted. Someone even asked if “a certain Mr. Turner appearance” will occur. Of course Al wasn’t here but it still was quite fun and Michael’s voice is at least as gorgeous as Alex’s one in the song… Anyway, I think I was as excited for Mini Mansions’ performance as for Royal Blood’s one and I wasn’t disappointed!! Michael, Tyler and Zach have an incredible energy and even my best friend who’d barely heard of them before kinda fell in love J
After Mini Mansions left the stage we started waiting for Ben and Mike to come up. Some British fans were in the crowd and started teasing the crowd screaming “ROYAL, ROYAL, ROYAL FUCKING BLOOD!!” and to be honest it was quite efficient! The rest of the room quickly joins them getting the place being heated up a little bit more. Another nice part was when R U Mine? started being played through the speakers to get the crowd to wait. As I said, there were quite a lot of AM fans so everyone started singing along which was pretty fun!!
Brighton boys finally arrived and started playing Hole. From that moment, I hadn’t stop singing, screaming, dancing and jumping around. We almost were at the front row so we had an incredible view of the stage, Kerr was about 3 meters from me! Before I went to the show some of my friends asked me if I wasn’t afraid that it gets boring as neither Ben nor Mike could really move around, one being on the drums, the other singing. I say: BULLSHIT!! These two guys fucking owned the stage even though they’re only two they have such energy that it felt like they were 4!! Crowd excitement kept increasing as they played Figure it Out and Better Stranger, then I lost my mind when they started Little Monster which probably is my favorite song of the album (with Ten Tonne Skeleton). People calmed down a little when the boys started playing some B-Sides like One Trick Pony cos most of them didn’t know it (I even heard people affirming it was songs from a new LP –‘) but since it’s a pretty catchy and strong song the audience get hooked on quite quickly… And it then Careless’ riff started and the crowd went mental!! It was so crazy that my friend had to leave front row not to faint. So I stayed alone in the madness for the last (and most expected) three songs: Ten Tonne Skeleton, Loose Change and Out of the Black. This last one was the absolute high point of the night, Mike came next to Ben and they played the drums together, each one having a stick and ragingly hitting the kit. I have to admit that it was quite an epic moment!!
In one word this night was MAGIC!! The only thing I regret now is that I missed them at Rock en Seine last summer cos they played at the time as Arctic Monkeys…
