Band:	Empire State Bastard
Album:	Rivers Of Heresy
Style:	Alternative metal, Hardcore, Sludge metal
Release date:	September 2023

01. Harvest
02. Blusher
03. Moi?
04. Tired, Aye?
05. Sons And Daughters
06. Stutter
07. Palms Of Hands
08. Dusty
09. Sold!
10. The Looming

Empire State Bastard is the new project from Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil and Oceansize’s Mike Vennart. The duo have separately described the project as an attempt to "make the most fucking poisonous vile music [they] possibly could, just unabridged hatred in musical form", and their attempt at ‘grindcore extreme metal’. In actuality, Rivers Of Heresy isn’t as harsh and abrasive as these statements may suggest, but it’s still pretty aggressive compared with the bands they’ve made their names with.

While this isn’t a grindcore album, it’s also not a ‘metal’ album by a non-metal artist that ends up not actually being all that heavy; this is a legitimately fierce record, something of a fusion of alternative metal and hardcore with an additional sludge/doom slant in certain tracks. Recruiting the perennially industrious Dave Lombardo on drums certainly helps (the quartet is rounded out by Naomi Macleod on bass), but the mastermind duo also pull out all the stops, with vocals that on the cleaner end inspire comparison to the likes of Mike Patton, Greg Puciato and Ozzy, and more firmly resemble Puciato when screaming. This venom is channelled through a tight 35-minute record on which the majority of songs run for fewer than 3 minutes, providing opportunities for a decent level of variety across the tracklist.

On the hardcore end, one can look at the likes of “Harvest”, “Blusher”, “Tired, Aye?” and “Sold!”; however, these are by no means repeats of one another. From the off, “Harvest” intersperses sharp higher-pitched guitar layers, muscular alt-metal riffs and even a brief moody noise rock-style snippet amidst the hardcore beats and screams; “Sons And Daughters” hosts a more extensive exploration of noise rock, and both songs feel like they reveal a presumably strong influence of The Dillinger Escape Plan on Empire State Bastard’s writing (bar a lack of any mathcore cacophony). Representing different aspects of ESB are “Tired, Aye?”, an intriguing experiment at a guitarless song, with only vocals and frantic drums appearing, and “Sold!”, which highlights the presence of Lombardo with its thrashy opening.

The remaining songs on Rivers Of Heresy offer other treats; to start with, there’s a sludgy trudge to some of the riffing on “Moi?”, but the introduction of keyboards later on adds a dramatic sense of melody to a more stoner-y passage. At the other end of the spectrum, there’s a rowdiness to “Stutter” that may appeal to fans of bands such as High On Fire, although there’s more of Chino Moreno than Matt Pike to the clean singing later in this track. Empire State Bastard have the ability to crank out a solid riff every now and then, with a particularly tasty one halfway through “Palms Of Hands” that feels like it drew influence from both Slayer and Mastodon.

Assuming that this is the first major dive into writing metal for Neil and Vennart (I don’t know their respective musical oeuvres well enough to say for sure, although the only solo Vennart album I’ve heard was far more alt rock than alt metal), Rivers Of Heresy is a pretty commendable effort by the group; the album is tight, lively, well-produced and has its fair share of enjoyable moments. On the flip side, it’s not got all that much to inspire me to revisit it going forwards, nor have I found myself retroactively regretting missing the band’s performance at ArcTanGent last month. The one song that I feels stands out positively is closing track “The Looming”, which was actually the song that caused me to check out this record in the first place; comfortably the longest song here, it opens in doomy stoner style accompanied by space rock-style keys and Ozzy-inspired clean singing, before turning darker and sludgier as it progresses. If Empire State Bastard ends up being a more long-term project, there’s no need for them to pivot much away from the alt metal/hardcore core of their sound, but I certainly wouldn’t complain if they included more songs in the vein of “The Looming”.

It's not grindcore, and it arguably shines brightest when Empire State Bastard aren’t trying to write unabridged hatred in musical form with “The Looming”, but as far as supergroup projects go, Rivers Of Heresy is more inspired than most.