Ahead of the imminent announcement of their fifth album, Employed To Serve have announced their first run of UK shows for 2025. In April, they'll hit the road for their biggest headlining gigs to date. And to underscore what a quiet night at the library it won't be, they're taking East Anglian death metal squadron Celestial Sanctuary and London hardcore brutalists Burner along.
"We're so fucking stoked about this tour," guitarist Sammy Urwin tells K!. "Playing Islington Academy is a massive one for us. And we're going to KK's Steel Mill, where they've got Judas Priest's Turbo backdrop! It's going to be sick having Burner and Celestial Sanctuary out with us giving people death metal and intense, grindy hardcore before we play every night."
Recently, the band gave us a preview of the new album, and how doing bigger stages like their arena tour with Gojira got under their skin when it came to writing new songs.
“On the big tour we did with Gojira [last year], we found ourselves leaning into our more metal stuff and less into the chaotic earlier songs," explains Sammy. "Some things just don’t translate in arenas, and I think some of that has fed into the new material, for sure.”
“We’re almost manifesting those big stages now," adds singer Justine Jones. "It’s hard sometimes, because we started this in our early 20s and we didn’t really know what we were doing. We’ve ticked off all of our bucket-list things, or at least a good portion of them. We were lucky enough to do most of our dream stuff quite early on in our career. So now sometimes we’re a bit like, ‘Well, why not act like the sky’s the limit and try to do these bigger songs for these bigger stages?’ Let’s do it and see where it takes us, and have fun whilst we’re doing it.”
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Employed To Serve UK tour 2025
April
21 Wolverhampton, KK's Steel Mill
22 Glasgow, Cathouse
23 Leeds, Key Club
24 Cardiff, Clwb Ifor Bach
25 London, O2 Academy Islington