Royal Republic - Save The Nation

Royal Republic

Save The Nation

by Lewis McBlane at 17 September 2012, 11:34 AM

Guilty pleasures are an everyday part of every humans lives; some of the most common ones include ABBA, BON JOVI¸ or hell, even CELINE DION, you can’t judge people on guilty pleasures. My biggest guilty pleasure has to be ROYAL REPUBLIC. Imagine relentlessly catchy, DIY, radio ready Pop Rock, with added fury, speed and outright immature brilliance, that is the only way to even nearly describe ROYAL REPUBLIC.

ROYAL REPUBLIC’s debut album, “We Are The Royal” was a completely immature, insane, infectious, wild romp. The matters addressed in the first album include; “Spaceships” (you will understand if you have the album), workplace perversion and…tommy guns…? Their new album, “Save The Nation” has much more serious matters at heart, (well for a few songs at least…) the title track deals with cult of personality style leadership, “Everybody Wants To Be An Astronaut” provides the bands point of view about human nature and how we are always greedy and striving for more and “Sailing Man” talks about the less favourable side of being single.

The whole album comes in at a miniscule 35 minutes, usually unthinkable today but ROYAL REPUBLIC pulls this off with staggering aplomb, due to the terrifying catchiness of every single song. The album, in this respect, can be compared to SLAYER’s“Reign In Blood”, such a small album but packed with complete and utter gems.

The production on this album is clear, with some excellent mixing on the bass and vocals in particular. It really goes to show what good being on a major label and having an excellent producer can do to help a band; these factors help accent the hectic, teenage-esque nature of the album.

This album is a quick, exhilarating, beast of an album. My favourite song from the album has to be “I Don’t Wanna Go Out”, I listened to that song literally 25 times in a row before it got dull. This is an excellent album but it is just not quite as good as “We Are The Royal” not quite as energetic, not quite as infectious or funny, but it might be impossible to have an album better on those three aspects than “We Are The Royal”.