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One listen to ROYALE LYNN is all it takes for YouTube’s algorithm to throw everything it has about her at you. Watch the lyric video for E.V.I.L. then there she is in on your home page, dancing over a caption that asks “have you ever heard of ‘disco metal’”? Refresh and she reappears with her song GREED. The caption is positively bait: “Heaviest female riff in history?”
ROYALE LYNN herself is the draw. Previously, she was an up-and-coming country singer. Early cut Workin’ On My Country belongs in 2024’s Twisters, a film in love with American soil and sweet southern smiles. Here, Lynn’s voice has a twang, signalling her credentials to country radio listeners. It’s a good song, and so is Redneck Rockstar, a punchier version of TAYLOR SWIFT’s early days. Runs In The Water is a nuts and bolts ode to everything in the culture: Chevys, creeks, hollers, towns with one road in and one road out.
If there is a moment everything changes, it is 2023’s Six Feet Deep, on which the palatable power chords are replaced with something chunkier and fuzzier. She still sings about being a redneck, but the aesthetics of modern metal are creeping in. Her next release, 2024’s DEATH WISH – which appears on Black Magic – is a collaboration with ASKING ALEXANDRIA’s Danny Worsnop. There’s a Johnny Cash reference here, a nod to nightly prayers there, but it is completely Download Festival, a world away from Country 2 Country, and the twang is M.I.A.
Let’s be clear: there’s nothing on Black Magic that could be considered ‘disco metal’, and the heaviest riff by a female artist is not on this album. Lynn’s social media game is fire, she knows how to raise an eyebrow. But the album’s selling point is the way she pulls off this leap to a new genre, and her shift in focus away from typical observational tropes to something more introspective. The album’s accompanying notes say every song on the record is about mental health, taking on toxic relationships (BATTLEGROUND) and our inner-critic (E.V.I.L.).
She plays among some obvious influences while finding her new voice. GREED’s industrial riffs have ARCHITECTS’ Animals to thank, the vocal distortion brings SKYND to mind, and Lynn herself has leaned into the song’s comparisons to EVANESCENCE. Pandora’s Box and When We Die have something of POPPY to them, all playful melodies masking sharp edges. She has toured with the likes of DISTURBED and SEETHER and that comes as no surprise.
What’s missing is her heritage. The stars of today – like new festival headliners BRING ME THE HORIZON and SLEEP TOKEN – cut through the noise of a saturated market by blending metal with pop and r’n’b respectively, so why shouldn’t Lynn bring back some of that country twang and carve her own space in metal’s culture?
In the meantime, there’s no getting past how great Black Magic sounds. Sacrifice goes down like a bottle of Jack because the crisp production makes the most of its bold instrumentation. Everything on here is loud as hell, not least Lynn, whose voice is front and centre, high in the mix. Her songs are designed to be memorised by the time they are over, the choruses are instant, every word crystal clear. Another artist would scream and shout their way through Dragon, but Lynn threads emotive melodies over its downtuned strings and jagged percussion. Her diverse CV suggests an artist who has persevered in order to be heard, and so on her debut record, it is fitting her words and her hooks take centre stage.
ROYALE LYNN is a fascinating story, one of an artist trying sounds on for size, taking influence from across genres. She has an ear for mass appeal; this is SPIRITBOX on easy mode for people of all ages, fans of all styles. She knows how to piece together a song and she has something to say, but we know she has more at her disposal which could set her apart and let her tell her story in a way only she can.
Rating: 7/10
Black Magic is set for release on June 27th via Epitaph Records.
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The post ALBUM REVIEW: Black Magic – Royale Lynn appeared first on Distorted Sound Magazine.
