PRESIDENT

A booking before a single

The band's first public act was a name on the Download Festival 2025 line-up with no music to its name, which is an unusual way round for a British metal act and did most of the early publicity on its own. The first single, 'In the Name of the Father', followed on 15 May 2025, then 'Fearless' on 5 June and 'Rage' on 18 July.

The four members perform under titles rather than names: The President on lead vocals and production, Heist on guitars, Protest on bass and Vice on drums. The position on identity has not moved since the start — 'We're never going to discuss or acknowledge our identities.' The most persistent attribution points at Charlie Simpson of Busted and Fightstar, who is listed as a company director of King of Terrors Limited, incorporated on 27 March 2025, and who has said the matter is not ever going to be acknowledged.

Comparisons to Sleep Token were immediate and have been batted away by the frontman as 'fucking lazy'. His own account of the aesthetic runs elsewhere: 'I didn't want it to feel modern, I wanted it to feel like something else. We wanted to add an element of discomfort', with The Shining offered as the reference point for that discomfort.

King of Terrors

The debut EP, 'King of Terrors', arrived on 26 September 2025 after a fourth single, 'Destroy Me', on 4 September. Six tracks, a title lifted from Job 18:14 and its description of the death of the wicked, and an arrangement palette that puts programmed beats and industrial texture under vocals that move between screamed passages and cadences closer to modern R&B.

It charted at number 25 in Australia, which was the first sign that the interest was not confined to the British metal press. Rock Sound gave them Best New Artist at its 2025 awards.

The vocabulary around the band was fixed by this point as well: the audience are 'citizens' and the shows are 'rallies', a framing that the staging then has to earn.

Atlantic, and a record that charted

President signed to Atlantic Records on 18 February 2026, the same day they released 'Angel Wings'. Three more singles followed — 'Mercy' on 26 March, 'Doom Loop' on 21 May and 'Dark Heaven' on 30 July — before the debut album.

'Blood of Your Empire' came out on 4 September 2026: ten tracks, written and self-produced by the band, with the electronic side of it traced by the band to Four Tet and Jon Hopkins rather than to anything in metal, and house and dance passages sitting next to metalcore guitars. The cover uses Delacroix's painting of the Battle of Poitiers. The frontman's summary of the subject matter is blunt enough to be useful: 'Blood of Your Empire isn't a criticism of God. It's a criticism of man.' An iTunes deluxe edition with ten bonus live tracks recorded at Rockfield Studios appeared three days later, on 7 September.

Reviews split along a predictable line. Blabbermouth went 8.5 out of 10 for the 'combination of metalcore, electronica and cinematic atmosphere' and Kerrang! gave it four out of five for 'heavy guitars, electronics and ambition'. NME landed on 3.5, calling it ambitious and eclectic but occasionally uneven, and Distorted Sound went to four out of ten on the grounds that the identity and the songwriting had not been settled.

Commercially it did what the touring suggested it would: number five on the UK albums chart, number four in Scotland, number nine in Australia and number 67 on the Billboard 200. The Heavy Music Awards named them Best UK Breakthrough Band in 2026.

From 800 capacity to arena support

The first headline show was announced on 21 May 2025, sold out in under 48 hours and took place at The Garage in north London on 30 July 2025. It ran six songs in 30 minutes, which was all the material they had. The frontman worked from a glowing red lectern while the other three stayed, in NME's description, stoic and robotic in black boiler suits and balaclavas; the review noted a cultlike atmosphere in the 800-capacity room, picked 'Destroy Me' as the highlight for the gravel in the vocal, and awarded three stars with the brevity as the main complaint.

The next step up was arenas, as support. President opened for Bad Omens on the Do You Feel Love North American tour alongside Beartooth, from 22 February 2026 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City through to late March. The Salt Lake set was seven songs and included the live debut of 'Angel Wings'.

Their own British run finished at the O2 Forum Kentish Town on 11 May 2026, 2,500 tickets sold out, 45 minutes drawn from a catalogue of eight songs, with a central podium and a bright pink cross behind it and rally-style audio between numbers. Support came from TheBoyShadow, the project featuring former Loathe guitarist Connor Sweeney. The crowd sang every vocal line and opened circle pits, which the reviewer put against bands of far longer standing who cannot get a room to do that. Festival sets filled the summer, including Rock im Park on 6 June and Louder Than Life on 18 September.

Where they stand in October 2026

The band are currently mid-campaign on their first North American headline tour, announced in March 2026, put on general sale on 3 April and produced by Live Nation. It runs from 4 September at Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville to 14 October at the House of Blues in Dallas — more than two dozen shows through the Midwest, east coast, south and then west, with Cenobia and Showing Teeth supporting on select dates, and it sold out. The Los Angeles date at The Wiltern falls on 7 October, with San Diego, Phoenix, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas to follow.

A UK and European headline tour was announced on 24 May 2026 and goes on sale-to-stage on 1 November at Slaktkyrkan in Stockholm, then Oslo, Copenhagen, Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Paris and Brussels, before a British leg from 18 November in Cardiff through Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham to the O2 Academy Brixton on 24 November. Tickets went to general sale on 29 May.

Beyond that, a first Australian headline tour was announced on 21 August 2026 for February 2027, with Hands Like Houses as guests: Metropolis in Fremantle on 19 February, Hindley Street Music Hall in Adelaide on 21 February, the Forum in Melbourne on 23 February, Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane on 25 February and the Roundhouse in Sydney on 27 February. General sale opened on 28 August.

The band's own site now lists three campaigns side by side — UK and EU 2026, a sold-out North America 2026 and Australia 2027 — which is roughly eighteen months from an unexplained festival booking to three continents of headline rooms.