Songfacts®:

• "Mountains at Midnight" is the lead single from Royal Blood's fourth studio album, Back To The Water Below. Released on May 26, 2023, the song is a return to the band's heavier sound, with a driving bassline and pounding drums.
  
  "I realized that most of our songs are pretty slow," frontman Mike Kerr told BBC Radio 1's Clara Amfo. "Because I think fast songs are hard to write because they're over quicker and we kind of came up with this riff during soundcheck on the last tour and it feels like something that should have been part of our catalog a long time ago. It was quite overdue. It was very natural was very much part of the show already. Even though we haven't played a single show yet."
• The phrase "bouncing off of your walls, on the mountains at midnight" suggests energetic and adventurous nocturnal activities. Here, Kerr unleashes a tale of succumbing to the allure of reckless behavior that stretches long into the night. Defying the warnings of his own body, he bounces off the walls, scaling mountains under the midnight sky. Kerr crawls out of his very bones, persisting until the break of day.
• After Royal Blood's self-titled debut album struck gold in 2014, Kerr found himself swept up in the wild whirlwind of a rock 'n' roll lifestyle. Amid the chaos, his excessive drinking exacted its toll, leading him to bid farewell to alcohol in 2019.
  
  When questioned about the meaning behind the lyrics of "Mountains At Midnight," Kerr cautiously explained to NME that he preferred not to divulge too much, having already bared his soul on their previous album, Typhoons.
  
  "I promised myself that I wouldn't delve too much into lyric meanings on this one – only because I spent so much of the last album dissecting the songs to the point where there was nothing left worth listening to anymore," he said. "What I will say is that there is a lyrical theme between the songs. It may not bring all of them together, but it is coming from a distressing place, mentally. I just don't want to destroy it before it's begun."
• Back To The Water Below was written from a gloomy abyss. "It feels like I was writing from that place of being somewhere that's very isolated, dark and deep down," Kerr told The Cut. "Whenever I get to that place, it's not always about trying to escape it. It's not about trying to swim for the surface; it's about acknowledging that this is where I'm at and sitting in those feelings. I'll try not to give everything away, though."
• Royal Blood recorded Back To The Water Below in their home studio in Brighton. The band produced the album themselves, having self-produced most of their previous project, Typhoons.
• Back To The Water Below was Royal Blood's fourth consecutive UK #1 album. The band's eponymous debut Royal Blood (2014), How Did We Get So Dark (2017) and Typhoons (2021) all topped the chart.