1968 – Royal Bastards

by Mark 'Yeti' Richard · August 6, 2025

The Cheshire, England based “stoner metal” band has been active since 2013. The stoner metal label is a generic way to describe their heavy rocking and melodious music. They consist of Andrew Valiant on vocals, Sam Orr on guitar, Bear on bass, and Dan Amati on drums. Their discography thus far includes: 2016’s Self Titled EP, 2017’s Fortuna Havana EP, 2018’s Ballads of The Godless, 2019’s Live in Los Angeles, For promotional Use Only, 2021’s Salvation if you Need, and 2025’s Royal Bastards. The quartet released Royal Bastards on June 19th 2025. It contains eight tracks and is around forty three minutes long.

“Standby” starts with samples that blend right into the opening riff. It crushes into a heavy rhythm that quickly turns into clean guitars and melodic but raspy vocals. Andrew’s voice is unique and awesome. He mixes in clean singing with intense screaming, some hardcore, metal, and punk influences, and other unique rock swagger. It really adds a nice dynamic to the excellent music that the band delivers. There’s a lot of meat and substance into each and every song on Royal Bastards. The musical transitions and clever twists are amazing. “Standby” has a cool and haunting vibe that explodes into a massive groove-laden and devastating riff. Midway through the song, they really mess with your head and build up into this super heavy and colossal ending. It’s really fantastic! The second track called “Endgame” starts with heavy accents and a hellacious scream that transitions back and forth between clean and scream. The melody that the band evoke is elegant and powerful. The music has psychedelic twists with the keyboards accentuating the vocal melodies on the chorus parts. The song breaks down into a heavy doom riff that plays out until the end.

The third track, “Jawmelter” is a very eccentric and excellent expression of terrific songwriting. It’s bizarre in its rawness, placed somewhere between The Stooges and Barkmarket. Starting with syncopated percussion, the vocals join right in. Expressing all kinds of vocal ranges, Andrew stretches his vocal chops all over the musical spectrum. It’s a great and bizarre song that has a lot of interesting things going on within it. I love when bands have a huge coverage of influences and sounds and are not afraid to express them through their music. “Scorched Earth” blends right in and starts with clean guitars jamming on a bluesy riff. It crushes heavy and fuzzy with integrated and varied singing. This band delivers a wallop of heavy groove, blues rocking psychedelia, and schizophrenic vocals. Royal Bastards makes for an expansive and very enjoyable listening experience.

“Softly Spoken” begins with a weird sample of a female voice that meets clean and acoustic guitars. The song is beautifully introspective and dynamic and has ravishing melodies throughout. There’s a fantastic scorching guitar lead too that shows another side of talent that the band possess. “Bad Trip” is a good and heavy vibing tune that continues to drive their sound into new and exciting territory. The 1968 sound is very hard to categorize because they combine so many styles into every track. I have great appreciation for a record like Royal Bastards because it’s so different and ballsy! “Tarantula Season” is another riff banger! Sam Or has a great fuzzy guitar tone and shreds throughout. He’s definitely a varied musician who is quite diverse too. The excellent drumming of Dan Amati is also worth noting. He is rock solid on every beat and at the end of the song, jams along with bassist Bear to a stunning completion.

The final track is the fantastic closer called “Merlin”. The song adds in some keyboard and flute and really rocks it out! The song fades out around five minutes for about thirty seconds and then returns with a thick fuzzy tone. The hardcore structure and attack is greeted with the demented vocals. Such a great way to end this record! 1968 surprised me a lot with how “put together” and elusive their music plays out. I really appreciate this fantastic release and hope more people can hear the sonic brilliance of this band. Royal Bastards is an album that I will continue to revisit throughout the rest of the year, because it’s that damn amazing.