Empire State Bastard announce inaugural ‘Bastard Fest’ in Sheffield

Empire State Bastard will be putting on their own festival in Sheffield next month called Bastard Fest.

Fresh from a US tour supporting Sleep Token, the supergroup consisting of Biffy Clyro‘s Simon Neil and Oceansize’s Mike Vennart will top the bill, with Bitch Falcon bassist Naomi Macleod and former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo in tow.

The event will take place at Sheffield’s Corporation on July 13 and features a host of heavyweights from British metal, including Heriot, Conjurer, Pupil Slicer and Sheffield’s own Hidden Mothers. It comes a day after the band’s performance at 2000trees Festival.

Tickets will go on sale tomorrow (June 20) via the venue website and See Tickets.

Empire State Bastard released their debut album ‘Rivers Of Heresy’ last year. In a four star review of the album, NME described the record as a “wonderfully weird ultraviolence from Biffy spin-off”, adding: “With help from Slayer‘s Dave Lombardo and Bitch Falcon‘s Naomi Macleod – take us on a wild grindcore ride.”

Following Empire State Bastard’s summer of festival commitments, Neil has more commitments in the diary with Biffy Clyro later this year. They will be headlining Victorious Festival in August and playing a huge outdoor show at Halifax’s Piece Hall the same weekend.

In October, they will be playing a string of shows in London and Glasgow, dubbed ‘A Celebration Of Beginnings’ and featuring performances of their first three albums in full – ‘Blackened Sky’ [2002], ‘Vertigo of Bliss’ [2003] and ‘Infinity Land’ [2004].

Promising to “reward hardcore fans who have been with the band throughout their journey to date”, Biffy will be playing three consecutive nights at London’s O2 Shepherds Bush Empire, before they return to Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom for their first live shows at the venue since 2014.

“That twisted take on everything has always been so us – even down to our band name,” frontman Simon Neil told NME in 2020, reflecting on their early years. “If you’d have told anyone from that era that we’d be the ones to stick around for 20 years, then they probably would have laughed in your face.”

“If you’d told anyone that we’d stick around for 20 years, they would have laughed.”