Royal Blood hit Number One with fastest selling British rock debut in three years

Royal Blood are officially a Number One band, topping the charts with the fastest selling rock debut in three years from a British act.

The band’s self titled record came in with a massive 66,000 copies shifted in the last week, giving them the highest tally since Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds in October 2011. While Gallagher was far from a new act, for the Brighton duo it’s a genuinely titanic achievement, paying off on an intense summer of festivals and live performances from Glastonbury, Download, Reading & Leeds and T in the Park through to supporting Arctic Monkeys at their Finsbury Park shows in May.

“I think from the beginning up until now, it’s been overwhelming,” offers up one half of the band, Mike Kerr, in the new issue of DIY, out on Friday. “It feels like every other day, we’re doing something where we’re on the other side of the world and we’re playing a huge show. If anything, right now kinda feels like the first UK tour that we did; we’re playing in a bunch of towns and cities that we’ve never played in before, and we’re putting in the groundwork here. We’re having a really good time.”

Elsewhere in the charts, new entries Basement Jaxx debut at Number 30 with ‘Junto’, while Dry The River come in at Number 31 with second album ‘Alarms In The Heart’.