When a band appears on a major festival poster with zero context and their masked singer's identity becomes a matter of genuine online detective work, one of two things happens: the music lives up to the mystery, or it doesn't. With Blood Of Your Empire, President's debut album, it does.
The hype around President built fast. Their name on last year's Download lineup with no explanation sparked speculation immediately. The first single, In The Name Of The Father, led online sleuths to connect them to Sleep Token's management camp. By the time the festival set arrived, the tent was overflowing. Three months on from that came the EP, King Of Terrors. Now we've got the full picture, and it's darker than most people probably anticipated.
What this record is actually about
The man behind President built this band to process what happened after he lost his Christian faith, and the questioning of every institution that came with it. That's not a concept bolted on for atmosphere. It runs through the whole record like a fault line.
Dark Heaven is the most direct about it, with a chorus that acknowledges losing faith in God and pivots into commentary on tariffs, flag worship and religion's reach over children. Pink Noise samples Plato's allegory of the cave. It's heavy thematically in a way that a lot of bands in this space only pretend to be.
Musically, the comparisons to Sleep Token are understandable but lazy. Yes, there's autotune, there's atmosphere built and then stripped back, there's the mask. But the sonic identity here is colder and more hostile. Riffs stab and loop. The Deftones influence is the more honest reference point: Mercy and Dionysus hit that dark, thrilling Steph Carpenter frequency, and Angel Wings features a blatant Chino Moreno "Woo!" that nobody's going to miss. Bring Me The Horizon and Architects get a nod on the danceable Doom Loop. Crosses comes to mind for the vibe and aesthetics on tracks like This Will Divide Us, which brings in piano and brass. Sleepwalker is built for lighters. Hate Figure, featuring prog hop artist and labelmate Ando San, throws in rap verses against post-hardcore screams and somehow holds together.
The one moment the illusion slips is Hate Figure's lyrical content, which targets perceived media persecution. The song's narrator references 21 years of hostility and piss bottles thrown from the pit. The problem is that everyone already knows who's rumoured to be behind the mask. A single Google search fills in the gap for anyone who doesn't. When anonymity is part of the artistic conceit, a track this autobiographical punctures it.
The verdict
Blood Of Your Empire generates real discomfort, the kind that comes when the things you believed in stop holding up. Sometimes it feels like complete paralysis under a weighted blanket. Other times it's screaming into a void with no guarantee of anything coming back. That's not easy to manufacture. We've seen plenty of bands try and come up hollow.
This doesn't. For a debut album, it's a serious statement. The [festival circuit has produced plenty of overhyped breakthrough moments this summer](/uprise/music/ive-never-done-hallucinogenic-drugs-but-now-it-feels-like), but President look like they'll actually stick around.
Blood Of Your Empire is out now via Warner Bros UK / Atlantic. UK tour dates land in November.