It’s 10 o’clock on a winter morning in New York. A much-discussed and polarising dignitary has awakened in his presidential suite and has immediately decided to get on with some work. Namely, by logging on to Zoom to grant Metal Hammer a rare, one-on-one audience. Unfortunately, he’s also feeling rather woozy.
“I’m pretty tired. What time is it back in the UK?”
It’s 3pm our time, Sir.
Article continues below“Is it sunny?”
No, Sir, it’s definitely not sunny.
“Oh well. Sorry, I’m just trying to get with it… obviously I had a pretty full-on night last night.”
He did. He’s referring to the rally he led for 650 of his newest supporters.
“It took a while to come down from an experience like that,” he reveals. “It was hard to get my head around it.”
The dignitary we’re referring to is simply known as the President. He is the frontman, songwriter and architect of metal’s latest masked sensation, President – a modern British metalcore band with baddiecore leanings.
The presidential suite is actually a modest hotel room, and the ‘rally’ was his band’s performance at Manhattan’s Gramercy Theatre, but we’re betting bigger rooms all-round are in his future. It was President’s second-ever headlining show, and only the third performance of their career. It sold out in one minute. No wonder he’s struggling to process it.
“It’s quite a ‘pinch yourself’ sort of moment,” he continues. “I’ve never actually played in America before. I’ve always wanted to, but it never quite happened. So, for it to be our third-ever show, the first show in the US, for the crowd to be that amazing, and to sell it out in less than a minute… yeah, that’s quite a surreal experience for me. We’re only six months in, as well. It feels like the start of something.”
The person staring down his phone screen at us, image wobbly as he holds it in his hand, is not the President that you see onstage. Rather than wearing a Point Break-style suit and a latex mask that seems to be some kind of amalgam of Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, he’s currently lounging on his hotel bed in a hoodie and a baseball cap, which he occasionally removes to ruffle his thick hair. This means his identity is known to us, but having pledged our allegiance and fearing a visit from the FBI, his likeness will remain as closely guarded as the contents of Area 51.
The actual start of President came when the man before us was sitting in a different hotel room, in Dubai (probably on some kind of ‘official business’). The President had previously written music, but realised he didn’t want to be the focal point for people. Like Slipknot, Ghost and Sleep Token before him – more on that band later – he decided he would release songs without revealing his identity.
“I knew I wanted to do an anonymous project,” he explains. “I just wanted to separate myself from the art form. I didn’t want me to be ‘the thing’, you know? I was in a dark place in my life and things were coming to fruition that were messing with my mental health. I was just really searching for meaning in my life.”
Some of this darkness was caused by the death of his uncle. The President had been brought up religious, but had come to reject those teachings. Forced to confront loss without belief, he found himself questioning the point of existence and what happens if there is no afterlife. His thoughts would loop and loop.
“Death had never really touched me in a personal way before,” he says. “I’ve had friends who have lost parents and other family members, but this was the first time I’d had to deal with it. It brought out so much anger and worry in me. I couldn’t separate myself from thinking about it every day. It started to ruin my life a little bit, because I just spent so much time thinking about death, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to waste my entire life thinking about death.’ I had no outlet… until I had this.”
He poured that darkness into debut President single The Name Of The Father, a melodic, moody number with a massive metalcore riff and waves of swirling electronica, with lyrics that reference scaring people into worship and how the song’s protagonist is ‘a fool, a sucker for a fantasy’. It’s bleak, it’s self-critical, and yet it allowed the President to feel a degree of freedom.
“I had a full-blown existential crisis,” the President quietly tells us. “I feel like I’m not indoctrinated anymore. I’m thinking my own thoughts, and that’s liberating. I was leaning really into pure nihilism a while back, but I’m probably somewhere in the middle now. I think the idea that there is nothing is crazy, but I’m trying to figure out what I think that is.”
This is the only point in our conversation when the usually articulate and well-spoken President’s speech is peppered with pauses, “umms”, “errs” and stutters. It’s obviously something he still finds difficult to share, and the reason he’s hiding his face. He started President as a solo project, but it evolved into a full anonymous band.
“I still think, whether or not people like it, there’s a sort of taboo around talking about religion,” he explains. “So I guess it’s just a bit of safeguarding. It’s a way of protecting myself without truly worrying. People can say, ‘You should just dig inside yourself and go to those places publicly’, but I don’t want people to be focusing on who is in the band. President is about the music, not who is making it.”
The public start of President came in February 2025, when their name was added to Download’s line-up. No one had heard of them. Their bio on the festival’s website cryptically read: ‘At Download Festival, the inauguration begins. Not with words, but with action. Not with empty promises, but with undeniable force. There will be no campaign, no date, no opposition. Only one truth: President has arrived.’
In the days that followed, people pored over pictures and video teasers on President’s social media, wondering who the white-gloved, cigarette-toting President was, and what it all meant. Internet sleuths uncovered a connection to Sleep Token’s management, and even speculated that they were some kind of offshoot.
On May 16, following a countdown on their website, President released In The Name Of The Father, its dramatic, neon-lit lyric video revealing President singing for the first time. Then came the pounding, autotune-inflected Fearless, its video showing the President removing his mask… only to reveal an actor.
Despite having just two singles to their name, hype levels for their ‘inaugural address’ at Download’s Dogtooth Stage were off the scale. Crowds at least 20 rows deep spilled out of the tent, with fans – some even with prams in tow – desperate to catch a glimpse. If President were nervous, they didn’t show it. Not that you could read their expressions. The President describes the performance, at the UK’s biggest annual metal event, as “a trial by fire”.
“It was the hardest thing you could do,” he recalls. “We couldn’t have put much more pressure on ourselves than that; never played together, no soundcheck, didn’t know how it was going to feel wearing the masks. But nothing can ever scare me again after that. That feeling is seared into my brain. Now, if ever we go back, I think it’s going to feel like a homecoming.”
The inaugural address had the desired effect, as President understandably became one of the biggest talking points of the weekend. As predicted, they had arrived, and their fanbase has continued to grow in number and devotion.
“I’ve already seen people with the President mask as a tattoo,” marvels the President. “I can’t quite believe it, but I think it’s so cool. It shows that we’re building a real community.”
Since Download, In The Name Of The Father has reached 17 million plays on Spotify, President have released an acclaimed EP, King Of Terrors, and all seven dates on their first UK headlining run in April – including a show at London’s 2,300-capacity Kentish Town Forum – have sold out. They’ve also been announced as support for Architects and Bad Omens on both bands’ US tours, and every single merch item on the official website is out of stock.
“When we first launched and started teasing things, we didn’t know this was going to happen,” smiles the President. “It’s quite wild to see us get this sort of traction. And it’s happened organically as well.”
Not everyone sees it the same way as the President. This sort of meteoric rise rarely happens to metal bands in the modern era, and even the progress made by the likes of Ghost and Sleep Token in their early days feels slow by comparison. You’d have to look back to Slipknot’s 1999 US Ozzfest run or Linkin Park’s raid on the mainstream with Hybrid Theory to find some kind of comparative buzz.
This has led to some people accusing President of being an ‘industry plant’ – a manufactured act assembled purely for commercial gain. When this is put to the man himself, his quiet and thoughtful demeanour drastically changes.
“You know, I really take issue with some of the misinformation that has been spread about us,” he pointedly states. “I have no problem with someone not liking us, but if I see something that isn’t true, that’s where I draw the line.
“People just will not, just cannot, accept that something can get big organically. They just won’t. I self-released all of this music, we did our first gig at Download because they asked us.”
You’re a President! You’re going to have to get used to conspiracy theories about you.
“Yeah, that is the world we’re living in, isn’t it?!” he laughs. “Evidence is right there, but people just will not accept that this hasn’t been paid-for or hasn’t been manufactured. Download heard us and they liked it. It’s not this big fucking conspiracy!”
While this is true, President’s naysayers point to the fact that the band share management with Sleep Token. They suggest President are nothing more than a cynical attempt to make lightning strike twice. So, Mr President. A second masked metalcore band has hit the 20s’ metal scene. What do you say to this?
“What a fucking lazy comparison,” the President snorts. “I mean, yes, we have the same management, and we both wear masks. Those are both facts… you got me! It’s like, is that it?! That’s all you’ve got? It’s hardly a new thing, is it, wearing masks?!”
We’re just the messenger, Sir. Yet as riled up as the President gets, he’s happier to focus on the positives, of which there are many. Alongside ramping up the number of rallies they’re holding this year, they’ll be releasing their debut LP.
“I can’t wait to show everyone this album,” he grins. “It’s something I know I’m going to be really proud of, and I think my friends and family will be too, which is important to me.”
Thematically, we can likely expect more soul-searching. A more obvious figurehead for the band might have been a clergyman, but besides the fact Ghost have that base covered, a president allows the frontman to more widely explore what it means to be human, and how our ideas of it are shaped by the society we’re born into.
“President melds this idea of politics and religion and a search for meaning,” he summarises. “Religion’s myth of creation, the ideology, political ideas about the way we are ruled – all of those things were in my head. A President, who is the most powerful being on Earth under God, seemed the best way for me to represent those ideas. He’s the figurehead. It’s not me, as an individual. It’s a representation of a system you aren’t meant to question.”
And while President might have started as a solo mission, the frontman now sees it as a joint endeavour with limitless potential.
“I’m definitely more of a band guy,” he replies, when asked if President are a dictatorship or a collaborative effort.
“We’ve been out here in America, and are really getting to know each other and working on stuff together. The other guys are really invested in the concept and the idea of what President stands for. It’s exciting to see. We’re already looking to the future to expand the idea, the back story, the visuals. This is everything I’ve ever wanted.”
It’s time to leave the President, who is off to a band meeting. He’s tired, but excited. As he should be. It’s only been a year, but President are on their way to winning a landslide victory over metal.
King Of Terrors is out now. President tour the UK in April and play Slam Dunk Festival in May.
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