Album Notes

“Aggressive music makes me happy. Happy music makes me aggressive.”

This revelation is declared by guitarist in The Royal Highness, Joff Nilsen. He’s a happy Norwegian, as he should be since he joined the Danish hard rock outfit The Royal Highness.

The Royal Highness borrow all the best parts from 70’s rock, 80’s punk, 90’s metal, and create a new thread to patch these elements together. While the band’s sound relies on slow riffs and soul-wrenching vocals, their career advances are lightning-fast! The band was already been scooped up in a worldwide publishing deal by EMI Denmark, brought aboard a UK manager, and toured intensively in Denmark and the USA. And that’s without having released one song! The Royal Highness’ music, personality and talent drew audiences by the hundreds and the music industry quickly followed suit. After a few strenuous years in Denmark and USA, the quartet recorded their debut album, La Mancha, over the summer of 2006. It took them two years from the first show to the first album - a deliberate decision made by the band. The group’s founder and bassist, Thomas Broge-Starck, explains:

“Everyone has a home studio these days, and it’s so easy to get a little label going. This means that so many bands will record an album as one of the first things they do, without thinking, ‘Are we even good enough? Do we have good enough material?’ We didn’t want to go down that road. We wanted the contracts down first and to get the live show, the studio experiences, and song writing down, before we started recording an album.”

The circumspect strategy worked. La Mancha is crawling, cascading and colossal guitar rock, featuring Dennis Kastens’ blues-rock wailing and charged vocals front and center.