“I’d rather people felt something than nothing at all,” the masked frontman tells Matt Mills in the newest issue of Metal Hammer UK, “People find it hard to accept that something can just explode organically. But if something’s getting a lot of attention, you’re gonna draw equal measures of hate as you are love.”
Sure, Sleep Token have been accused of being industry plants, but nothing quite takes the cake for the amount of industry plant accusations that PRESIDENT was on the receiving end of in 2025. For the first few months, they were a group that nobody could stop talking about, booking a Download Festival with just a few cryptic videos and no released music. And everyone’s tune pretty much followed the same ‘industry plant’ tune – and to be fair, you kind of don’t just book a slot at one of the UK’s most beloved metal festivals.
However, when fans started connecting the dots and seeing that the name PRESIDENT was copyrighted to Busted and Fightstar vocalist, Charlie Simpson, it started to all make a bit more sense. And maybe fans aren’t accusing the band of being an industry plant, moreso looking for confirmation that if it is Simpson, or he is involved in some aspect, that he had decades worth of resources and connections behind him. And that’s not to say it’s undeserving… but rather, unprecedented.
“When you blow up really quickly, it’s assumed by you’re backed by a huge corporate machine,” the PRESIDENT vocalist – who goes by Mr. President – tells Mills. Mr. President says that he truly “couldn’t have planned a harder way to introduce PRESIDENT into the world, and that “if it went wrong, it would have been a fucking disaster.”
Telling Metal Hammer again that he was “writing a full-length album. I’ve got four songs written already, and I’d say three of those are the best I’ve ever written. This album is going to be an evolution. It takes bits of the EP, and it’s pushing certain elements even further. Obviously, music is subjective, so people might not agree, but I am my fiercest critic – if I love it, that’s a great start.” So, it almost feels Mr. President is telling us to prepare for the shitstorm of people that don’t agree with him. And unfortunately, there’s a lot of them.
From an outside perspective though, this whole situation is just fascinating.
Want More Metal? Subscribe To Our Daily Newsletter
Enter your information below to get a daily update with all of our headlines and receive The Orchard Metal newsletter.
