New Music Review: PRESIDENT 'King Of Terrors - EP'

PRESIDENT 'King Of Terrors - EP' - Cover Photo

Rating: 7.5 / 10 Stars

PRESIDENT is: President (Vocals), Heist (Guitars), Protest (Bass), and Vice (Drums)

REVIEW – Mystery is easy to manufacture. Sustaining it is the hard part. In the current heavy music climate, where masks, symbols, cryptic rollouts, and anonymous identities can ignite whole corners of the internet before a band has even fully revealed its shape, PRESIDENT arrive with both opportunity and burden already attached. Their debut EP, King of Terrors, is set to arrive September 26th, through King of Terrors / ADA, and the conversation around it has already grown louder than many bands manage across entire album cycles. The band’s official and press-facing footprint presents PRESIDENT as an anonymous UK collective, with the lineup operating under the names President, Heist, Protest, and Vice rather than public identities.

That anonymity is inevitably going to bring the Sleep Token comparison traffic. There is no way around it. A masked British heavy band blending metal, electronics, R&B textures, atmosphere, and ritualized presentation is going to be measured against the most successful modern version of that formula. But King of Terrors is interesting because it does not merely sound like a band trying on a costume. It sounds like a project trying to build a mythology quickly, forcefully, and with enough sonic ambition to justify the secrecy.

The title King of Terrors is drawn from the biblical language of death, specifically Job 18:14, and that reference gives the EP an immediate thematic weight. This is not pop-metal theater built only on surface darkness. Across these six tracks, PRESIDENT appear to be reaching toward mortality, worship, fear, rage, identity, and the strange devotional pull of destruction. Apple Music’s EP notes frame the release as six songs steeped in programmed beats, industrial textures, and vocals moving between screamo intensity and modern R&B cadences. That description is useful because it captures the project’s central tension: this is heavy music that wants to move like a machine, breathe like a confession, and sell its hooks like a sermon.

The opener “In the Name of the Father” is the EP’s clearest declaration of intent. It is metalcore electronica unafraid of Auto-Tune, and that matters. PRESIDENT are not pretending purity is the goal. The track treats the human voice as something that can be processed, warped, wounded, and still emotionally direct. The title invokes religious authority, inherited guilt, and patriarchal weight, while the music drags those ideas through synthetic pressure and heavy-band impact. As an introduction, it does what it should: it establishes the mask, the altar, the glow of the screen, and the damage underneath.

“Fearless” steps deeper into the project’s emotional architecture. The title sounds like confidence, but in this kind of music, fearlessness is rarely simple. It can be bravery, numbness, denial, or a survival response that looks heroic from the outside because nobody can see what it cost. PRESIDENT’s strength lies in making that ambiguity feel stylish without completely draining it of feeling. The song works best when the polished surfaces and darker undercurrents collide, when the band let melody and weight stare each other down instead of choosing one over the other.

Then comes “RAGE,” one of the EP’s most important pieces. Inspired by Dylan Thomas’ famous poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” the song carries the obvious connection to resistance against death, but PRESIDENT do not seem interested in quiet literary reverence. The track skitters and convulses, turning poetic defiance into digital agitation. Its rage is not purely physical. It is nervous-system rage. Algorithmic rage. The kind that pulses behind the eyes after too much bad news, too much self-surveillance, too much helplessness dressed up as awareness.

“Destroy Me” may be the most direct title here, and directness helps. PRESIDENT’s mythology can be elaborate, but the emotional core of a song like this is immediately legible. It speaks to surrender, obsession, punishment, and the strange human desire to hand someone or something the weapon and call it intimacy. In the context of the EP’s religious and death-haunted imagery, “Destroy Me” feels less like melodrama than invocation. It is the sound of someone kneeling, but not necessarily in prayer.

“Dionysus” is where the band’s more sensual and atmospheric instincts come forward. The Deftones-esque guitar crush gives the song a physical weight, but the cool-breeze verses and plaintive chorus suggest PRESIDENT are more compelling when they allow contrast to stretch. Dionysus, as a figure of ecstasy, intoxication, ritual, and breakdown, is a perfect reference point for a band trying to merge body music with spiritual dread. The track feels like a haze before collapse, a room full of beautiful lighting where something awful has already happened.

“Conclave” closes the EP with a title that fits PRESIDENT’s entire aesthetic system: secrecy, hierarchy, closed rooms, ritual decision-making, power hidden behind ceremony. As an ending, it suggests the project is not trying to resolve itself yet. It is trying to leave the door cracked. A debut EP like King of Terrors is not meant to answer every question. It is meant to make the audience want to join the investigation.

The strongest thing about PRESIDENT is also the most dangerous thing about them: the concept is arriving fully formed before the songs have had years to prove themselves. That can create hype, but it can also create skepticism. The band’s rapid rise has already triggered “industry plant” conversations in the press, while reporting around the project has also emphasized its self-produced and DIY origins. That tension may become part of the story whether the band wants it or not. In 2025, mystery is rarely allowed to remain mystery. The internet wants authorship, evidence, names, management connections, proof of authenticity, and a reason to either believe or reject the campaign.

But purely as a debut statement, King of Terrors has real promise. It is not perfect. At six songs, it sometimes feels more like a proof of concept than a fully realized world. The Sleep Token shadow is unavoidable, and there are moments where the emotional grandeur risks feeling pre-installed rather than earned. Yet the EP also contains enough strong writing, production identity, and aesthetic confidence to suggest PRESIDENT may become more than a trend-piece curiosity.

What works is the way the band understand modern heaviness as atmosphere as much as impact. The programmed beats are not decoration. The R&B cadences are not cynical crossover bait. The industrial textures are not merely dark wallpaper. At their best, PRESIDENT use all of these elements to create music that feels like confession filtered through machinery, like worship music for people who no longer trust salvation but still crave ritual.

That is where King of Terrors finds its real footing. It is not simply about death. It is about the performance of fear, the seduction of belief, and the strange comfort people find in symbols when ordinary language stops working. PRESIDENT may be masked, anonymous, and intentionally theatrical, but the EP’s best moments suggest there is something human behind the veil.

With King of Terrors, PRESIDENT are poised to enter the modern heavy conversation as both phenomenon and question mark. The hype will bring people to the door. The songs will decide whether they stay. For now, this debut EP is a compelling first sermon: sleek, heavy, dramatic, flawed, memorable, and aware enough of the current moment to weaponize its own mystery.