Biography

What’s in a name? Calling your band Empire State Bastard is a statement-of-intent: riff after motherfucking riff, battering ram rhythms and feral vocals from death metal growls to black-hearted howls. The band: Simon Neil (Biffy Clyro) + Mike Vennart (Oceansize, Biffy live guitarist), probe almost every dark crevice imaginable of metal and genre-adjacent extremity. The pair would spend downtime on tour sharing the heaviest, most avant-garde or confrontational music they found. When embarking on their own sonic wasteland, Simon already had the band name, leaving Mike with a particularly grotesque challenge: what music could he write to live up to it? The result: “a spectrum of wide-ranging versions of pure sonic annihilation. I’d written songs which didn’t directly relate to each other, but I like to think they all make friends with each other.” Simon’s contribution to ESB is almost exclusively vocals: his voice more varied than ever, from shrieks and gasps to guttural death growls. Underpinning the duo is a drum performance akin to a runaway train, pulverising and grooving in equal measure. Mike programmed the initial drums, but the pair had a dilemma - who can play like Slayer legend Dave Lombardo? Simon’s solution? “Let’s just ask Dave fucking Lombardo!” He quickly accepted. So what’s in a name? Simon coined it, Mike defined it: “I set about making the most fucking poisonous vile music I possibly could, just unabridged hatred in musical form.” That’s Empire State Bastard.