Pearls before swine

If you're looking for a band to take your arena gig virginity, then you could certainly do much worse than Royal Blood. That said, I wasn't at the Motorpoint Arena on Monday night for them - no, the real attraction was the opportunity to see the band occupying the main support slot. It wasn't quite the same watching At The Drive-In as a near 40 year old from a balcony seat play to a clueless crowd who couldn't give a toss as it was seeing them first time around, as a 22 year old from the moshpit at Leeds Festival, but it was still damn good (much better than paying a fiver for a "pint" of Tuborg poured from a can that was at least half head...)

Partly as a consequence, comeback album in.ter a.li.a has grown on me hugely, to such an extent that it might just sneak into my top five albums of the year when Rob polls the contributors to Sounding Bored in the next couple of weeks.