The Long Game. The Rally Cry. The Decades Compound. ☨☨☨
Last night, I saw PRESIDENT live in Amsterdam. Not just a band. Not just a show. It felt more like walking into a temporary state. A rally. A ritual. A reminder that creation, when done with intent, still bends reality in small but meaningful ways.
The room was packed. Sold out show, max capacity 350 people. Flags waved. Symbols everywhere. A masked figure at the centre of it all, pulling the crowd into something that felt larger than music. Less “concert,” more collective agreement that we were all here for the same reason, even if none of us could quite articulate it yet.
“You’re about to witness history” over the speakers. Tonight, everything lined up. And when you’ve been doing creative work long enough, you learn to pay attention when that happens.
Twenty-two years isn’t an accident
The venue was celebrating its 22-year anniversary. 2026 is also the 22nd year that AltSounds still breathes life into its unique form. Stronger, more creative than ever. AltSounds, for context, is the original creative outlet of RIOT’s founder and creative director, MUG5. It’s where I first learned what it meant to participate in culture instead of just consuming it. Where I got my first press ticket. Where I realised that access isn’t about status. It’s about curiosity and showing up consistently and with open arms.
The first band I ever reviewed live through AltSounds was Charlie Simpson’s Fightstar. That night, almost two decades ago, MUG5 handed me the drummer’s phone number. Not a press release. Not a guest list confirmation. A phone number. That small act unlocked a new world. Backstage. Side doors. The unpolished reality of live music. I wasn’t watching culture anymore. I was inside it.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Fightstar – Loughborough, Student Union [Live]Progression is key to a band’s success, years of touring, building a fan base and a lot of studio work. In the 5 years that Fightstar have under their belt, the performance tonight just shows how hard they have worked. The set was tight, I mean very tight. The songs where hammered out with an abundance of energy and aggression. Due to a hand injury, drummer Omar Abidi had to give it a miss for the performance tonight. The replacement drummer lived up to Omar’s standard of ridiculously tight and technical abilities. The vocal harmonies gushed out by guitarist Alex Westaway could send shivers down the spine of any man woman and child. The band as a whole seem very comfortable on stage, showing that all their hard work has paid off. And It can only get better from here.
Having seen Fightstar back in 2006 play to a horrific crowd at Download festival (they were pretty much bottled throughout the whole gig), I didn’t know what to expect from tonight’s older audience here to see Feeder (which I didn’t realize until walking into the venue). There wasn’t much movement, but after each song the band received a great reception. Lead singer Charlie Simpson got them moving a few times during the set, proving his role as a great showman.
The new single ‘The English Way’ sounded epic. Simpson’s vocals for every song were on form, bellowing his patent husky approach to vocal melodies. The Progressive rock ballad; ‘Mono’, was played with a lot of emotion. The juxtaposition of delayed guitars jumping into a stupidly heavy distortion worked so well. It pretty much blew your socks off. They did showcase a new track ready to be released on the newest album they are currently working on. This song was very technical, reminiscent of Biffy Clyro’s older material, with strange time signatures and jittery guitars. They finished their set off with their first release ‘Palahniuk’s Laughter’ that went down very well with the crowd.
Accepting a band for what they are is very hard for the closed minded individual. Love them or hate them, Fightstar are a very good emo-progressive-rock band, and should be well respected for their music.
And now, years later, I’m standing in the tiny Bitterzoet Amsterdam venue watching PRESIDENT. A project tied, in spirit and lineage, to that same creative universe. On the exact anniversary cycle. You can call it a coincidence. Or you can call it what it actually is. The long game is revealing itself.
I guess I’ll have to wait my turn
Forgiveness is a strength I’m yet to learn
I can’t bury my head
Under the sand and hope it makes me feel less
How the hell do I pretend?
Just tell me it’ll make sense in the end
I can’t lie to myself, it fucks with my health
I just want to be fearless☨PRESIDENT – ‘Fearless’ Lyrics
Creation doesn’t need a face anymore
PRESIDENT works because it understands something many artists and brands still fight against. You don’t need to be visible to be present. You don’t need to explain yourself to be understood. You don’t need to chase relevance if you’re building meaning. The masks aren’t a gimmick. They’re a strategy. A shield. A reset.
View this post on Instagram
This isn’t about anonymity for mystery’s sake. It’s about removing ego from the centre of the work. Letting the symbols, the sound, the energy carry the message. In a world obsessed with personal branding, PRESIDENT feels almost radical in its refusal to overexplain. It’s a project built by people who’ve already lived several creative lives. And that’s exactly why it works.
Longevity is a creative advantage
Here’s the thing no one tells you early enough. Longevity isn’t boring. It’s clarifying. After twenty years, you stop trying to prove you belong. You stop rushing ideas out of fear. You start trusting patterns. You learn when to speak and when to let silence do the work.
To create something new, something must burn.
PRESIDENT feels like that kind of project. So does AltSounds. So does RIOT, in its own way. They aren’t chasing the feed. They aren’t optimised for weekly spikes. They’re built for decades, not dashboards. And standing in that venue, watching campaign flags wave in a room full of people who felt it rather than filmed it, I was reminded why that matters.
You don’t come back the same. You aren’t supposed to.
I walked out of that show feeling like a different creative. Not because I learned a new technique, but because I was reminded of something foundational: creation compounds. The things you build when no one is watching eventually connect in ways you couldn’t have scripted. Publications turn into platforms. Side projects turn into passports. Experiences stack quietly in the dark until one night, the math finally adds up.
⤴ There’s a quiet symmetry here worth pausing on. PRESIDENT’s RAGE draws directly from Dylan Thomas’ Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night — a poem written not as literature, but as defiance. A son refusing silence. A voice choosing friction over surrender. When the frontman repeats “do not go quiet”, it lands less as reference and more as inheritance.
That lineage runs closer to home than it first appears. Recently, RIOT’s creative director MUG5 explored the same poem through Thomas’ Welsh legacy — not as nostalgia, but as a study in endurance. Different mediums. Same instinct. Rage as fuel. Creation as resistance. The refusal to fade politely.
Some ideas don’t disappear. They wait for new vessels.
PRESIDENT wasn’t just a band on a stage. It was a mirror held up to anyone who’s stayed in the game long enough to see the cycles repeat and improve. The rally ends. The flags come down. But the idea remains.
Twenty-two years in, the work looks different. It has to. What matters is that it stays honest. Still evolving, still capable of catching you off guard. Last night was the proof: if you build patiently and protect the work from the noise, the universe eventually nods back.
Pay attention when it does. Those moments are more than just rewards; they are oxygen. They keep the creative flame focused and bright. Because that energy. That internal heat has to go somewhere. If it isn’t burning for the work, it becomes corrosive. It turns inward. It becomes the devil’s weapon.
I’m choosing to keep it burning.
