Image: President [Jonathan Weiner, Official Press Photo]
With Blood Of Your Empire, President recently released their debut album. Even the title sounds like it deals with some pretty big themes: power, religion, history and decay. However, it isn’t about a completely fictional world. Instead, it offers a look at our own reality and the personal conflicts that come with it.
In our interview, President talk about how an initial piano idea suddenly turned into a house track, why the feeling of a song matters more than individual sounds, and what role the persona behind the project plays.
President: Between Person and Persona
President perform anonymously and keep their identities secret. It’s a decision that can be both a blessing and a curse, as other bands have experienced in the past. Sleep Token, Slipknot in their early years and others have all discovered that anonymity comes with its downsides, too. But one of the most fascinating aspects of President is the question of where the actual person behind the project ends and the persona begins. Are there things you can say as President that you might not say privately? The answer is pretty clear: absolutely, as the mastermind behind the project explains.
“The strange thing about this persona is that it somehow gives me permission to be less careful. There are topics on this record that I found difficult to talk about even with people I’m really close to. And yet I can put them into a President song and stand on stage in front of thousands of people. This character naturally creates a certain distance, but what I say through it can be brutally personal.”
Blood Of Your Empire: A World That Is Actually Our Own
Blood Of Your Empire also moves between grand, almost dystopian imagery and deeply personal themes. However, the album shouldn’t be understood as a completely separate universe with its own rules. The world President are talking about is ultimately our own.
“The album is essentially a diary from inside that conflict,” the vocalist explains. “It’s a place where faith can be beautiful but also destructive, where people search for certainty while still living with doubt, and where power repeatedly tends to corrupt the things we create to give our lives meaning.”
When a Piano Idea Suddenly Turns Into a House Track
Musically and lyrically, President refuse to be confined by any boundaries. That’s one of the reasons why the British collective appeals to such a broad range of listeners. “White Devil” shows just how much a song can change during the writing process. The track started with a somewhat jazzy piano idea and a Balearic-style beat. Little by little, it developed into a much more danceable song — until, by the end, it could almost pass as a house track. Apparently, this development wasn’t planned from the beginning:
“We didn’t force the change. The song practically demanded it, so we simply followed it.”
The Feeling Comes Before the Sound
Examples like this make it clear that, according to the band, there is one component a song can never be reduced to: the feeling.
“I’m much less attached to individual sounds than I am to whether I can still feel the song and believe in it when I hear it,” President explains. “You can take out a guitar, change a drum part, replace a synth or even rebuild the entire arrangement, but if the emotional reason behind the song is lost, there’s nothing left worth preserving.”
Not Every Story Has to Be Told Yet
With a debut album, there is always the danger of trying to tell too much at once. Were there ideas or themes that the band consciously left off Blood Of Your Empire because they belong in a later chapter of President?
“Yes, although not necessarily in a calculated way,” the frontman says. “There are things I’m not yet ready to write about publicly. Other ideas simply didn’t fit into that particular phase.”
Go with the flow — that’s also the band’s approach. There are still plenty of stories left untold:
“Blood Of Your Empire captures where my head was at while making the album. I’d rather leave the next chapter unwritten than try to cram every thought I’ve ever had into a debut album.”
Blood Of Your Empire is available now. You can grab your copy here. And don’t forget to check out our President band merch and get yourself ready for the next show.
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