Songfacts®:

• Royal Blood are a two-piece band from Brighton comprising bassist and vocalist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher. Having known each other for several years in different groups, they finally came together at the beginning of 2013 when Kerr returned from a trip to Australia. Thatcher picked him up from the airport, and they decided to form a band on the journey home.
  
  Royal Blood was given an early boost by Arctic Monkeys' drummer Matt Helders, who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with their name during the Sheffield band's televised headline set at Glastonbury that summer.
• This is the group's debut single. It was released by Black Mammoth Records prior to Royal Blood's signing to Warner Bros.
• Mike Kerr told MTV UK how the song came about: "Ben was doing this rhythm - the beginning of it - when we were in a pub having a pint," he recalled, "and then we were sort of going 'oh wouldn't it be cool if we did that' …We had no idea it would be on the radio or anything."
  
  He continued: "We thought it was just really long and sort of our heaviest song…it didn't feel like a single but we thought 'f--- it, let's just put it out and see what happens'."
• The animated music video was directed by Christy Karacas and illustrator David Wilson. Karacas is a co-creator of Adult Swim's Superjail tv series and voices the character of the head guard, Alice. David Wilson is an illustrator, who has previously worked with Arctic Monkeys on "Do I Wanna Know?" and David Guetta on "Titanium."
  
  Karacas said: "The staging of the action was really important to me as I wanted to create a dynamic space filled with fast paced kinetic energy and movement that matched that of the song. I animated much of the action 'straight ahead' and let the music dictate the movements and ideas in a stream of consciousness way as opposed to pre-planning everything from the start. The unrelenting rhythm of the bass and drums of this song had everything to do with the animation that seemed to just flow out of my fingertips."
• Mike Kerr explained the song's meaning to Artist Direct: "It's got pretty angry lyrics that are really about feeling betrayed ultimately over a bad thing coming out of nowhere, hence the all puns intended, coming 'Out of the Black.' It felt great recording that one."