What doesn’t kill us takes a long time to make us stronger. It’s a statement that the four individuals from the mid-north coast of New South Wales who comprise Royal Chant bid you consider well, through the ten tracks of their debut album RAISE YOUR GLASS & COLLAPSE. Firstly, these things that don’t kill us render us powerless, leaving us bruised, beaten and bloodied. They bury us chin deep in isolation, suffocating us with the separation from 9 to 5 normality. The boredom of familiarity becomes distant and we wish we had never wished the mundane away. But just when we think this mass too heavy to carry anymore, a weight shifts. Little by little, the muggy load that once clogged assumptions and beliefs gets lighter. Dread is replaced by a nervous anticipation that perhaps something better is to come. Royal Chant knows all too well that no amount of prayer or good will can protect us from these moments. They must felt by each and every one of us. They must hurt, sometimes deeply. Royal Chant doesn’t subscribe a cure for these ills. Instead, the band embraces them. Beneath the distortion and slurred vocals is all the thinking, feeling, loving, dancing, & disappointment of this shared experience. Royal Chants’ songs, like these moments, though framed in intelligent and skillful sounds, are subtle and simple in substance. They are an invitation to be vulnerable; to share love, doubt, anger, loss, resignation, being human, and being less-than human – as complicated or straightforward as you want them to be. They are laughter through tears; an exploration of pain and happiness through which the band invites audiences to simply reflect. It is in this space that we may just find true strength. Barbaric, sometimes chaotic, but mostly beautiful.