PRESIDENT had barely released a song before modern metal put them on trial. With Blood Of Your Empire finally out, there is enough music to ask whether anybody was arguing about the same band in the first place.
PRESIDENT arrived in heavy music with two problems most new bands would probably kill to have: everybody was watching, and everybody already had an opinion.
Before there was an album, there were masks. Before there was enough of a catalog to really define a sound, there were identity theories, Sleep Token comparisons, industry-plant accusations, Reddit detectives and enough amateur analysis of management structures to suggest a surprising number of metal fans have quietly earned business degrees. Their first single, “In The Name Of The Father,” arrived in 2025, their first live appearance came at Download Festival shortly afterward, and the supposedly unknown band promptly overflowed the tent. A deal with Atlantic, sold-out headline dates and support slots with some of modern heavy music’s biggest acts followed at a speed that would make almost anyone suspicious. By the time PRESIDENT had enough songs to fill an EP, a good portion of the internet had already decided exactly what kind of band they were.
I like PRESIDENT, which makes watching all of this considerably more entertaining. The band’s debut album, Blood Of Your Empire, arrived September 4 with ten tracks and the slightly absurd responsibility of proving itself as a debut from a group that had already accumulated the mythology, scrutiny and fan behavior of one several records deep. PRESIDENT’s own official album page keeps its description appropriately broad, while the US store frames the record around mortality, faith and a world in crisis. The actual songs turn inward more often than all that governmental language might suggest.
The imagery surrounding PRESIDENT practically begs people to invent a lore document. Their website has an HQ, a Press Office Bureau and “Broadcasts.” Fans join the “Campaign.” Concerts are “Rallies.” Their North American tour is, naturally, a “Campaign.” The official PRESIDENT site commits so thoroughly to the language that it would be easy to assume there is some enormous fictional political universe hiding behind the masks.
Listen to PRESIDENT explain the music, though, and the costumes start looking less like lore and more like armor.
In a March Metal Hammer profile, PRESIDENT described the project emerging during a particularly dark period following the death of his uncle. He had grown up religious, moved away from those teachings and suddenly found himself confronting death without the certainty of an afterlife he once had. The anonymity was deliberate from the beginning. It gave him some separation from material that was personal enough to still be uncomfortable, particularly when writing about religion, mortality and the existential spiral that followed that loss.
By the time PRESIDENT spoke with Rock Sound about Blood Of Your Empire, those questions had not magically resolved themselves into a tidy concept album. In Rock Sound’s album-story interview, the album is described less as an attack on faith than an attempt to sort through it, particularly the difference between belief and the ways people have historically used religion for power, money and control. PRESIDENT may dress himself as an authority figure, but the songs spend an awful lot of time being suspicious of authority.
That version of the band is considerably more interesting than the one the internet built for itself during PRESIDENT’s first few months.
Everyone already had a PRESIDENT in their head
The online version of PRESIDENT has mostly existed as a list of accusations. Masked band? Sleep Token. Fast success? Industry plant. Electronics? Trend chasing. Atlantic Records? Manufactured. Established management? Please report directly to the comment section, where a twelve-part investigative series is already underway.
There are legitimate reasons people raised an eyebrow. NME’s review of Blood Of Your Empire notes how quickly the band moved from overflowing its Download Festival tent to an Atlantic deal and major touring opportunities, with accusations of nepotism appearing almost immediately. Metal Hammer reported earlier this year that PRESIDENT’s first American headline appearance, only the third show of the band’s career, sold out New York’s Gramercy Theatre in one minute. Their first UK headline run sold out as well. That is an extremely abnormal trajectory for a band introducing itself to the world. Pretending otherwise would be silly.
It is also where the Sleep Token comparison has become nearly impossible to escape. Both projects use masks. Both exist in modern heavy music. Both understand that presentation can be part of the music rather than a poster slapped onto it afterward. PRESIDENT has been fairly explicit about finding the comparison lazy, and listening to the full album makes the limitations of it clearer. There are certainly moments where the two can occupy neighboring territory, but PRESIDENT pulls from electronic music, pop, post-hardcore, djent, metalcore and other corners of alternative music too restlessly for “another Sleep Token” to explain very much. Metal Hammer also notes that the bands share management, which pours a little gasoline onto a comparison the internet was never going to abandon politely.
Blood Of Your Empire is where those assumptions finally run into an inconvenient amount of actual music.
The record does not even seem particularly interested in rewarding listeners who wanted ten more versions of the heavier material that introduced the band. “DOOM LOOP,” “Mercy” and “dark heaven” gave PRESIDENT enough weight to attract a modern metal audience, but the rest of the album refuses to stay there. “Pink Noise” slides between alt-pop, electronics and metalcore. “Hate Figure,” featuring Ando San, turns toward rap-metal. “White Devil” brings piano into the closing stretch. Even “Dionysus,” carried over from King Of Terrors, arrives reconsidered rather than simply dropped into the track list untouched. NME called the record eclectic and occasionally erratic, while Kerrang!’s review praised just how far the band stretches its electronic side. Both reviews ultimately landed at four stars.
PRESIDENT has also been open about those electronic instincts being more than decoration. In the Rock Sound interview, influences including Four Tet, Jon Hopkins, Bicep and Hot Chip enter the conversation alongside the obvious heavier reference points. The dance side of PRESIDENT is not being treated as something to sprinkle quietly beneath a breakdown. It is part of what the project intends to be.
Suddenly, the argument happening among listeners makes considerably more sense.
The fans cannot agree either
The PRESIDENT subreddit has spent the days since release producing a miniature version of the larger debate. In one album reaction thread, listeners disappointed by the lack of heavier songs sit directly beside people who were surprised by all the synths and loved the record for exactly that reason. “Pink Noise” repeatedly emerges as a favorite among the previously unheard material, while the spoken sections in “Sleepwalker” have inspired a much less diplomatic response. Several listeners also felt the strongest material had already been released as singles, which is its own small modern-album problem when half the meal arrives before the plate does.
Another release-day discussion produced basically the same disagreement. Some fans wanted more melancholy, some wanted more heaviness, some immediately latched onto the new songs, and others were still working out whether the full album lived up to King Of Terrors. This is not particularly unusual fan behavior, but it exposes something useful about PRESIDENT: even the people who already like the band do not seem to share a single definition of what the band should become.
The most interesting reactions are not really about genre at all. Some listeners have connected directly with the religious trauma, doubt and uncertainty running through the material. Those responses cut through a lot of the noise surrounding PRESIDENT because they are responding to the thing the person behind the mask keeps saying he created the project to discuss. Once a song about losing certainty reaches somebody who recognizes that feeling, figuring out which established musician might own the jaw beneath the mask starts seeming substantially less urgent.
The anonymity debate is still going nowhere, of course. PRESIDENT is precisely mysterious enough to make people desperate to solve the mystery while also being visible enough to give them material to work with. That arrangement has produced its own strange relationship between the band and its audience. There are fans who want the identities left alone entirely, fans who treat them as an open secret and fans who appear to have transformed recreational facial recognition into a second job.
The masks are more useful when you stop treating them as a puzzle.
If PRESIDENT wanted anonymity solely to generate speculation, eventually revealing the identities would be the payoff. The explanation the band has given is more practical. The character creates distance. It allows someone uncomfortable publicly discussing faith, grief and existential uncertainty to walk onstage and do exactly that anyway. The fact that the character happens to be a political authority figure while the songs question religious and institutional authority gives the whole presentation another layer without requiring a corkboard covered in red string.
There is still marketing here. Obviously. PRESIDENT has an aesthetic developed down to the vocabulary on its website, and the project understands exactly how effective withholding information can be in an online culture that treats unanswered questions like a personal attack. Strong presentation and sincere songwriting are not mutually exclusive concepts, despite the internet’s occasional determination to choose one.
The same goes for industry connections. Having experienced people around a project helps. It can put a band into rooms an unknown act may never reach on its own. It cannot, however, make thousands of people keep coming back indefinitely if they do not like what they hear. The hype can get somebody through the door once. PRESIDENT is now in the much less glamorous phase where songs have to keep them there.
The mystery gets less useful as the band gets bigger
Three days after Blood Of Your Empire arrived, PRESIDENT released Live From Rockfield Studios, performing material from both King Of Terrors and the debut album with cameras considerably closer to the musicians than the project's early mythology might have suggested. Rock Sound praised the session as an unusually intimate look at the band's playing and creative choices. It is almost funny how useful that is at this exact point in PRESIDENT’s life. After more than a year of everyone staring at the masks, one of the smartest things the band can do is let people stare at their hands instead.
The live side of the project is also becoming harder to dismiss as a curiosity. PRESIDENT’s North American Campaign is underway now, with the band scheduled to reach The Underground in Charlotte on September 20. Live Nation currently lists the Charlotte date for 8 p.m., part of a run continuing through the United States later this month.
That stage may end up being the clearest test of PRESIDENT yet. Mystery is exceptionally effective online, where a photograph can be analyzed for weeks and a ten-second teaser can generate several days of speculation. A room is less forgiving. Eventually the lights go down, the band walks out and all the elaborate language about campaigns, rallies and broadcasts has to survive contact with people who paid for tickets.
Blood Of Your Empire probably will not end the PRESIDENT argument. Ten songs have mostly given everybody additional ammunition. Listeners who wanted something heavier are arguing with people thrilled by the electronics. People convinced the band is manufactured are arguing with fans who hear their own experiences in the lyrics. Critics are debating whether the genre changes amount to genuine experimentation or a band still figuring out what it wants to be. Somewhere, inevitably, somebody is zooming into a photograph of an elbow.
The album does accomplish something more useful. It makes the easiest explanations increasingly difficult to maintain.
PRESIDENT is not interesting solely because the members are anonymous. The Sleep Token comparison becomes increasingly flimsy when the record starts bouncing between metalcore, dance music, pop, rap-metal and piano. The band's rise has been unusually fast, and pretending strong industry support played no role would be naïve, but treating every person buying a ticket as somebody hypnotized by clever branding is not especially convincing either.
The project arrived with so much mythology attached that everybody formed a PRESIDENT of their own before the real one had enough songs to interrupt them. Blood Of Your Empire does not resolve that problem. If anything, it reveals how completely different those imaginary bands were.
Some people heard a marketing campaign with breakdowns. Some heard another masked band arriving in Sleep Token’s wake. Some heard an established musician they were determined to identify. Some heard a symbol of everything polished, calculated and suspicious about modern metal.
Other people heard somebody trying to work out what remains when the beliefs that once explained death, purpose and existence no longer feel certain.
That PRESIDENT is much harder to fit neatly under a mask.