“it’s Maries’ best yet” – MOJO: 4* “Tor Maries rides the emotional rollercoaster on defiant third LP” – Uncut: 9/10 “Though raw in its treatment of loss, its theme gives Metalhorse a shimmer, replete with references to a hall of mirrors and the endorphin-tingling sound of a one-armed bandit“ – The List “The ambition and scope of this record will take many by surprise. It’s early days yet, but when they bring the curtain down on 2025, expect Billy Nomates to stand tall among this year’s winners.” – Louder Than War
Billy Nomates, the project of the Bristol-based songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Tor Maries, today announces an intimate live date at Oxford’s The Bullingdon on 23 September 2025, to raise funds and awareness for people affected by multiple sclerosis with all profits and donations going to The MS Society. The MS Society is the UK’s leading charity for people affected by multiple sclerosis, a condition that affects the brain and spinal cord and impacts how people move, think and feel. MS is the most common neurological condition among young adults, with over 150,000 people in the UK living with multiple sclerosis (MS). Most people are diagnosed in their 30s and 40s. Tor’s own recent MS diagnosis arrived during the production of her latest album, Metalhorse, a concept album revolving around the image of a dilapidated funfair, representing the tumultuousness of life – risk and pleasure, danger and exhilaration. “To me, Metalhorse is this crumbling fairground where some rides are nice to get on and some rides aren’t,” Maries explains. “That’s how life felt for a minute, and it still feels like that a bit now.” About the newly announced Oxford show, Maries said: “This is a charity close to my heart and that of friends’. The vital work and research they do is game changing and helping thousands of people live the fullest lives. MS will not define us.” Tickets for the show, which kicks off Billy Nomates’ UK tour, are on sale this Friday at 10am here.
Billy Nomates’ third full-length album, Metalhorse, explores blues, folk and piano-driven arrangements that take her stark punk sound in a more pastoral direction. Out now via Invada Records (listen in full here), Metalhorse was produced by James Trevascus and recorded at Paco Loco in Seville, Spain, and is the first Billy Nomates album to be made in a studio and with a full band. Enlisting bass player Mandy Clarke (KT Tunstall, The Go! Team) and drummer Liam Chapman (Rozi Plain, BMX Bandits), who round out Billy Nomates live, the trio were booked into Paco Loco just three months after the passing of Maries’ dad to Parkinson’s. “We were so close and our bond was music,” she says of her relationship with her father. “That was my safety and protection in the world. Even in the care home, as things were getting worse, I’d visit him and he’d ask me what I was doing. I’d show him the new demos, or I’d have been on the radio. It sort of saved everything from being shit, because we had this positive thing to talk about.” Metalhorse is a balancing of extremes. Reckoning with loss, material insecurity, and trying to stay true to yourself against an increasingly unpredictable backdrop of global chaos, the scales could easily have tipped towards darkness, but the more Maries has had to weather, the more precious those smaller moments of happiness have become. Metalhorse begs the listener to find their own funfair. It might not be the loss of someone significant, or trying to find a foothold in an industry in crisis, but there will always be things that feel perilous. At the same time, you have to marvel at the lights while they’re still on. Dancing with those feelings of uncertainty and joy, Metalhorse is awash with both pain and perseverance. “Those Leonard Cohen days might be ahead of me,” she laughs, “but for now there has to be some hope, even if it’s not real. You have to tell someone that it’s going to be alright.” Metalhorse follows 2023’s critically acclaimed, CACTI, and Billy Nomates’ self-titled 2020 debut. Metalhorse includes the singles “Override”, “Plans”, an explosively simple rock track which premiered on BBC Radio 6 Music by Nick Grimshaw, and “The Test”, a rebellious and defiant release that was A-Listed at BBC Radio 6 Music.
Billy Nomates tours the UK and Europe in September and October, with a show at SWX in her hometown of Bristol on 24 September and a London show at the legendary Electric Ballroom on 9 October. The full tour dates are listed below. Live: 23 Sep: The Bullingdon, Oxford, UK – in support of The MS Society 24 Sep: SWX, Bristol, UK 25 Sep: Phoenix, Exeter, UK 26 Sep: Papillon, Southampton, UK 28 Sep: Chalk, Brighton, UK 29 Sep: Waterfront, Norwich, UK 1 Oct: Project House, Leeds, UK 2 Oct: Academy 2, Manchester, UK 3 Oct: Glasgow SWG3 TV Studio, Glasgow, UK 5 Oct: Glasshouse, Newcastle, UK 6 Oct: Leadmill, Sheffield, UK 7 Oct: Metronome, Nottingham, UK 9 Oct: Electric Ballroom, London, UK 17 Nov: Den Atelier, Luxembourg, LUX 18 Nov: Trabendo, Paris, FRA 19 Nov: Botanique Museum, Brussels, BEL 23 Nov: Pumpehuset, Copenhagen, DEN 24 Nov: Kesselhaus, Berlin, GER 26 Nov: Gebäude9, Cologne, GER 27 Nov: Toekomstmuziek, Amsterdam, NED | 
