Benefits to support Empire State Bastard on 2023 winter UK and Europe tour

Empire State Bastard have announced that Benefits will serve as opening support during their 2023 winter UK and EU tour.

Kicking off on November 2, both bands will play the first show of the tour at the Alhambra venue in Paris, before making stops in Cologne, Amsterdam, Berlin and Hamberg that same week.

From there, they will start the UK leg of the tour with a show in Cardiff on November 9. Other cities the band will hit include Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, as well as a slot at London’s Electric Ballroom on November 11.

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Taking to X/Twitter, Benefits tweeted: “Massively excited to say we’re going to be supporting @ESB666_ [Empire State Bastard] on tour in November!!! Such an amazing band, we LOVE them and can’t wait to play and then have our ears blasted to smithereens every night. YES! COME SEE US!!!” Visit here for tickets.

The tour will celebrate the release of Empire State Bastard’s album, ‘Rivers Of Heresy’. The band is the blistering project is the side-project of Biffy Clyro frontman Simon Neil, and their touring guitarist Mike Vennart (Oceansize).

Back in July, NME named Benefits’ debut LP ‘Nails‘ as one of the best debut albums, mixtapes and EPs of 2023 so far.

In a four-star review of the album, NME shared: “The beauty of ‘Nails’ is in its raw and primal urgency; it had to be made and heard now, like government-approved sewage being pumped into a river. However, there’s a sense that the band are yet to assume their ultimate form – their power is still brewing. Hell, they’ll get their chance.”

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Speaking to NME at this year’s Glastonbury about working on new music, Benefits’ frontman Kingsley Hall said: “Our drummer Cat [Myers, former Mogwai and current Texas live drummer] is a machine. She joined after the album was finished. We want to get stuff out as soon as possible. The point of the band originally was to react to current urgencies: political, social or whatever. It could be 750 people drowning in the Med or five millionaires drowning in a submarine, that could be child poverty going through the roof in my constituency. We’ve been promoting ‘Nails’, but now we need to knuckle down and get things sorted.”

He continued :“We’re still writing all the time, but we need to get this done as soon as possible. The point of us was to be urgent and to be quick. That’s why the songs are so fast.”

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