Biffy Clyro frontman Simon Neil starting a grindcore-adjacent project was not on my 2023 metal bingo card. Alongside Biffy Clyro's touring guitarist Mike Vennart and ex-Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo, Empire State Bastard is a surprisingly unapologetic outpour of brutality in various subgenres of extreme metal. My previous experiences with grindcore have been disappointing, but this is a surprising change of pace. In all fairness, despite initially branding it as a grindcore project, they eventually stopped describing themselves as that before the album dropped. I can respect that they felt like they were going to go hard enough to reach grindcore levels of brutality though, as the final product is nothing short of amazingly violent.
Simon Neil brings his decades of weird music writing experience and attaches it to his most extreme of harsh vocals, one which we have basically never seen before. His screams are heard less with more recent Biffy Clyro releases, and his harsh vocal features are few and far between (the Goliath one is still insane, though), so it's honestly wild that he'd just throw out a project with the most extreme vocals he has ever put out to the world. As half of the musical ingenuity behind the band, you can see all the influences that his time in Biffy Clyro has on this album. The use of odd time signatures and time signature changes, the unorthodox song structures and creative choices, even going as far as to have a whole guitarless metal track, it's like he's having fun fucking around and doing weird shit that he doesn't usually get to do in Biffy Clyro, and I'm all here for it.
What amazes me the most is that despite the abrasiveness of this extreme music, there are so many great moments that make this such an unbelievably well done project. Harvest has some crazy grooves and riffs, and that blast beat section is murderous, Blusher has a section where Simon just counts mistakes, but the guitar riff under it is so tasteful. Moi? is a comparatively calmer track, but moments like the 'blame anybody' section are super fun, Tired, Aye? is just a crazy drum and vocal onslaught, but they keep it so interesting throughout it's actually unreal. Palms Of Hands boasts this super punky riff, Dusty has this weird but pretty cool slow and doom-like instrumentation to it, the 'I have got my mind made up' polymeteric groove on Sold! is playful and the chorus goes insane, and The Looming sounds like it could be a weird Biffy Clyro track to be honest. Not going to lie, they reminded me of Every Time I Die a bit here and there, with the kind of tasteful chaos that both bands pull off so effortlessly.
I feel like I'm not going to be able to do justice to just how surprisingly good this album is. Simon Neil and his work with Biffy Clyro is no feat to begin with, but it feels like he has managed to outdo himself significantly with this album. It's refreshing all around, extremely well done for the genre and super unique. Every single moment feels well thought through and refined, even with the extreme heaviness. I never expected Simon Neil to go balls-to-the-walls heavy, but I am so glad that this exists. This band and debut album have captured an unbridled identity of relentless and unapologetic extremity that is simultaneously unforgiving and amazing, and is wildly different from anything else in the extreme metal scene.
Rating: 9/10