PRESIDENT – Blood Of Your Empire Review

PRESIDENT arrived with an almost ridiculous amount of hype attached to them.

The masks, the secrecy and the speculation inevitably became part of the story, but Blood Of Your Empire makes a pretty convincing argument that we should probably stop worrying about who’s behind PRESIDENT and start concentrating on how bloody good the music is.

Because I absolutely love this album.

The best way I can describe listening to Blood Of Your Empire is that it feels like an adventure. Just when you think you’ve worked out what kind of album you’re listening to, it moves somewhere else.

At its core there’s plenty of heaviness, but that’s only one part of it. Across the record you’ll hear electronics, industrial sounds, massive melodic sections and plenty of unexpected experimentation alongside the riffs and screams.

It shouldn’t necessarily all belong on the same album.

Somehow, it does.

More importantly, it rarely feels like PRESIDENT are experimenting simply for the sake of showing you how many different things they can do. There’s still an identity holding everything together.

A huge part of that comes from the vocals.

There are obviously strong rumours surrounding the identity of PRESIDENT, but I don’t really have any interest in perpetuating them. If the person behind the project wants to remain anonymous, I’d rather respect that and judge what we’re actually hearing.

And what we’re hearing is an incredible vocalist.

The range across this album is ridiculous. There are moments of genuine vulnerability followed by huge choruses and considerably more aggressive vocals, yet it always sounds like the same person and the same project.

The production deserves just as much praise.

Blood Of Your Empire sounds enormous.

But it’s not simply loud for the sake of being loud. There are so many little details buried within these songs that I’ve found myself wanting to go back through the album and hear them again. It’s one of those records where headphones genuinely make a difference.

The lyrical side is fascinating as well.

Religion and mortality hang heavily over the album, alongside questions of faith, power and what people do in the name of those things. It doesn’t feel like religious imagery has simply been attached to PRESIDENT because it suits the aesthetic. There’s something much more personal underneath it.

And musically, PRESIDENT refuse to sit still.

Angel Wings, Mercy and Dionysus show just how melodic and emotional this band can be, while elsewhere things become considerably darker, heavier and stranger. Hate Figure might be one of the clearest examples of just how far they’re prepared to push outside the obvious boundaries of modern metal.

By the time you reach White Devil, you realise you’ve travelled quite a long way from where the album started.

That’s exactly why I’ve enjoyed it so much.

It’s just fun to listen to.

There’s an unpredictability to it that makes me want to play the whole album rather than simply pick three songs for a playlist and forget about everything else.

I’m also going to say something that will probably annoy a few people.

When people tell me how incredible Sleep Token are, this is much closer to what I personally want that kind of band to sound like.

I’m not saying PRESIDENT are simply a better version of Sleep Token. They’re not the same band and, particularly across this album, there are far too many different influences involved to reduce PRESIDENT to that comparison.

But that mixture of heaviness, atmosphere, vulnerability and experimentation connects with me far more here.

I do have one criticism, although I’ll openly admit it’s an incredibly selfish one.

I understand exactly why PRESIDENT released the King Of Terrors EP.

It introduced the band, established the world around them and helped create the momentum that has led into this debut.

But In The Name Of The Father, Fearless and RAGE are so fucking good.

These songs had an incredible reception and we’ve already seen how well they translate live. As a fan, there’s a part of me that desperately wants them sitting alongside this material.

If you added those songs to Blood Of Your Empire, would I personally enjoy the album even more?

Absolutely.

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve actually come to respect PRESIDENT for not doing that.

Those songs were already proven.

It would have been incredibly easy to include them, strengthen the album with material everyone already knew and loved, and essentially take the guaranteed win.

Instead, PRESIDENT have drawn a line underneath that chapter.

That was the EP. This is the album.

There’s something remarkably confident about that decision.

So while selfishly I still want those songs here, I can’t really criticise a band for backing themselves enough to leave some of their most successful material behind and say, effectively, we’ve got more.

And they clearly did.

I also wasn’t alone in feeling like this album takes you somewhere. After hearing the record, [NAME] gave me his own take:

“From the opening title track to the final song, it takes you on an adventure. Heavy riffs, huge atmosphere and a sound that pulls you in from start to finish. The lyrical content feels like it was written by someone who has spent a long time wrestling with religion and mortality. If you liked what you previously heard from PRESIDENT, you’ll absolutely love this album.”

That word — adventure — keeps coming back to me.

There will undoubtedly be people who came into this album ready to dismiss PRESIDENT because of the masks, the hype or the comparisons that have followed them since they appeared.

I’d argue Blood Of Your Empire is where those conversations start becoming considerably less interesting.

The anonymity might be what initially makes you curious about PRESIDENT.

The music is now good enough that it doesn’t really matter who’s underneath the mask.

9/10