Boundary pushing instrumental trio, Animals As Leaders, have today confirmed their return to European & UK shores for a string of headlining dates in January 2023.
The tour marks the first overseas shows for the prodigious group since summer 2019.
Special guests are yet to be announced. Tickets will go on general sale on Friday, 30th September, at 10am BST / 11am CET / 5am EST.
Get tickets here.
European & UK Tour Dates 2023:
Tue 10th Jan – UK – BIRMINGHAM The Mill
Wed 11th Jan – UK – GLASGOW Garage
Thu 12th Jan – UK – MANCHESTER O2 Ritz
Fri 13th Jan – UK – LONDON O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
Sat 14th Jan – France – PARIS Cabaret Sauvage
Mon 16th Jan – The Netherlands – ZOETERMEER Boerderij
Tue 17th Jan – The Netherlands – NIJMEGEN Doornroosje
Thu 19th Jan – Germany – COLOGNE Essigfakbrik
Fri 20th Jan – Germany – MUNICH Backstage Werk
Sat 21th Jan – Germany – BERLIN Lido
Sun 22th Jan – Germany – HAMBURG Uebel & Gefährlich
The tour offers European fans their first opportunity to hear tracks live from the band’s highly acclaimed, latest album “Parrhesia”, which was six years in the making and released in March 2022. Listen to the album on streaming platforms here.
Animals As Leaders are soon to embark on a North American trek, first hitting the road for two more dates with Incubus, before joining Lamb Of God, Killswitch Engage, and Fit For An Autopsy. Headline shows then follow with special guests Car Bomb and Alluvial. December will see the group performing three Latin American headline shows, calling into Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.
It might sound strange to associate “storytelling” with instrumental music. But Animals As Leaders jettisoned the rules, limitations, and boundaries of conventional rock music from the start. Armed with palette-expanding eight-string guitars, rich synths, and pummeling percussive grooves, the trio is beloved by metalheads, aspiring virtuosos, jazz fanatics, and casual listeners alike. As Pitchfork observed, “Animals As Leaders have walked the tightrope between sheer technical virtuosity and actual emotional resonance”. Even without vocals, this is intimate, myth-making music.
Animals As Leaders began as a solo outlet for guitarist Tosin Abasi, whose creative partnership with classically trained guitarist Javier Reyes and Berklee-educated drummer Matt Garstka is built on a shared love of everything from fusion to technical death metal. Garstka graced the cover of Modern Drummer in 2015. In one of his many appearances on their cover, Guitar World named Tosin among the Guitarists of the Decade. Rolling Stone featured him as part of their “Young Guns” series. The Chicago Tribune declared him “the closest thing prog metal has to an Eddie Van Halen”.
Kerrang! included their album, “Weightless” among its Best Albums of 2011. “The Joy of Motion” entered the Billboard 200 at No. 24 in 2014, and “The Madness of Many” cracked the Top 20 in 2016. Now more than a decade into their career, a quick look at the bands they’ve toured with demonstrates the consistently diverse appeal of Animals As Leaders. It’s a list that includes Korn, Deftones, Thrice, Meshuggah, Underoath, TesseracT, and Circa Survive as well as major festivals with the likes of Linkin Park, Avenged Sevenfold, and Slipknot.
Animals As Leaders offer more than clinic-ready musicianship and proficiency. A focus on mood, texture, and emotive power elevates the material past any preconceived notions, resulting in a fascinatingly unique phenomenon, with an unlikely and profound appeal across multiple sub-genres and over 200 million career streams to date.
Weblinks:
animalsasleaders.org
www.facebook.com/animalsasleaders
