Royal Blood – Figure It Out (Official Video)

A Single That Cut Through the Noise

Figure It Out arrived as one of the defining statements from Royal Blood’s self-titled debut in 2014, a concise shock of high-gain energy that helped crystallize the Brighton duo’s identity. Built on the unlikely premise of bass and drums alone, the track makes a towering first impression, folding blues-rock grit into a modern, hard-edged attack. Alongside Out of the Black, Little Monster and Come On Over, it framed the band’s early momentum and introduced a sound that was both lean and colossal.

Songwriting and Sonic Architecture

Royal Blood’s signature is the illusion of a full band conjured by two players. On Figure It Out, Mike Kerr’s bass is split, layered and driven through octave and fuzz treatments until it occupies both the low-end and the space typically ceded to guitars. The riff work is terse and hook-led, shifting between clipped verses and a chorus that widens into a blunt, chant-like release. It is a study in dynamics without ornament, where each section pivots on contrast rather than complexity.

Ben Thatcher’s drums are the counterweight to that saturated bass tone. His patterns lock to the riff with an almost percussive vocality, accenting stops and starts, tightening the groove and then swinging it open when the chorus hits. Cymbal crashes create brief bursts of air, but the mix stays centered on a dry, forward drum sound that underscores the band’s commitment to directness. There are no extraneous parts, just pressure and release, tension and payoff.

Lyrical Tension and Themes

The song’s lyrics sketch a scene of doubt and misdirection. Fragmented phrases, terse images and an insistently repeated title phrase pull focus to the friction between what is seen and what is understood. The voice circles suspicion, frustration and the urge to draw a line through confusion. Royal Blood are not storytellers in the linear sense here. Instead, they use economical language to mirror the music’s call-and-response structure, setting up questions and then answering with sheer force.

Video Concept and Direction

The official video, directed by Ninian Doff, amplifies the track’s central ambiguity. It unfolds as a kinetic chase, but the narrative refuses a single version of events. Through bold color shifts and perspective changes, scenes are reframed so that motives and roles keep slipping out of certainty. The device is simple in appearance, yet it invites the viewer to interrogate what they think they are seeing. That conversation between image and assumption mirrors the song’s refrain, which keeps circling back to the demand to “figure it out.”

Doff’s direction favors clear, readable action and quick visual pivots that sync with the track’s turns. The editing clips to the drum hits, the palette intensifies with the riff, and the whole piece moves with the track’s compact runtime. It is a rock video that trusts pace and concept, reinforcing how the duo thrive on economy without sacrificing impact.

Studio Craft and Personnel

Figure It Out was produced by Royal Blood and Tom Dalgety, with Dalgety handling recording and mixing. The production foregrounds immediacy, keeping overdubs minimal and letting the performances dictate shape. Kerr’s bass sits thick in the midrange, with enough definition for the riff to cut, while Thatcher’s kick and snare are tuned to punch through that density. The result is a polished rendering of a raw idea, a studio capture that preserves the duo’s live ferocity.

Place Within the Debut Album

As part of the 2014 album Royal Blood, Figure It Out distilled the project’s core philosophy. The record carried a modern strain of blues-rock that nodded to garage minimalism and heavy alternative textures while avoiding pastiche. In a decade when rock bands often reached for layers and atmospherics, Royal Blood leaned on propulsion, heft and negative space. The track’s compact design, bold riffing and focused chorus made it a natural point of entry for listeners encountering the duo for the first time.

The album’s wider context is well documented. It delivered a Mercury Prize nomination, produced multiple singles that traveled beyond the UK underground and helped position the duo for a rapid ascent. Their follow-up, How Did We Get So Dark? in 2017, would continue that trajectory, marking a second successive UK number one. In hindsight, Figure It Out feels like the hinge where their aesthetic coalesced into a signature.

Production Lineage and Influences

Royal Blood’s approach sits within a lineage of stripped-down rock pairings, yet the execution is distinct. The duo’s bass-forward architecture trades the looseness of garage tradition for a tighter, metallic grind. Harmonic intervals in the main riff lean on blues inflections, but the distortion profile and rhythmic discipline skew toward modern hard rock. The space left by the absence of a guitar is not filled with ambience or synths, it is pressed into rhythm, turning momentum itself into a third element.

Credits

Artist: Royal Blood
Song: Figure It Out
Album: Royal Blood (2014)
Producers: Royal Blood, Tom Dalgety
Recording and Mixing: Tom Dalgety
Director: Ninian Doff
Producer (Video): Sarah Park
Production Company: Pulse Films

About Royal Blood

Formed in Brighton in early 2013, Royal Blood comprises Mike Kerr (bass, vocals) and Ben Thatcher (drums). Their early breakthrough arrived quickly, propelled by a sound that fused pounding rhythms and heavily distorted bass guitar into a ferocious blues-rock hybrid. High-profile tours with artists including Arctic Monkeys, Iggy Pop and Foo Fighters supported that rise. The band won Best British Group at the BRIT Awards in 2015, receiving the trophy from Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, and their catalogue includes the Mercury Prize-nominated debut Royal Blood (2014) and the UK chart-topping follow-up How Did We Get So Dark? (2017).