The only guitar band on the BBC’s Sounds of 2014 list, the Brighton drums and bass (as opposed to drum’n’ bass) duo Royal Blood hit No 1 with their debut album and acquired a celeb fan in Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. Repeating the feat hasn’t been easy: this is an archetypal difficult second album. Hard riffola, cannon fire drumming and glam preening again ignite songs pitched somewhere between Queens of the Stone Age and Muse.

The duo hurl everything at them – harmonies, killer bass sounds, presumably the studio’s kitchen sink – but the tunes aren’t nearly as strong as, say, the first album’s Ten Tonne Skeleton. Although delivered with intensity, the most banal lyrics read like limericks: “She drags me by one finger, to her lips, hook line and sinker.” At less than 35 minutes, How Did We Get So Dark? lasts longer than the Ramones’ debut – and indeed Royal Blood’s own – but this time out they seem worryingly short on new ideas.