Univeristy lights up the stage with new Live EP - EU tour incoming!

UNIVERSITY, the explosive Crewe-based four-piece formed of Zak Bowker (vocals/guitar), Ewan Barton (bass), drummer Joel Smith and Eddie (mascot), today release their new EP, Live at The Windmill.

Live at The Windmill sees UNIVERSITY capture the zeitgeist of their explosive live performance at London’s historic venue, amplifying the delightfully unhinged energy that went into their debut album, McCartney, It’ll Be OK.

The four tracks showcase live versions of “History of Iron Maiden pt.2” and “Notre Dame Made Out Of Flesh” from their debut EP, Title Track, alongside the sardonic “Massive Twenty One Pilots Tattoo”, named after the answer to a game of “what would be the worst tattoo in the world?”, and the incendiary, sprawling punk rock of “GTA Online” from last month’s album release.

The EP Live at The Windmill is available digitally today here and is only available in physical format on side B of the limited edition cassette version of the album release here as a full-length live LP with additional unreleased tracks.

Watch the video for “GTA Online (Live at The Windmill)”, made with fan footage from various live shows, below.

UNIVERSITY’s humour melds into their music. After signing to a label and taking the 'business side of their operation' more seriously, they decided to offset this grown-up attitude by pushing their music to more extreme and more absurdist places. “It’s a side effect of taking the rest of it more seriously,” Bowker says, with the band determined to trust their weirdest, funniest impulses.

While the music can be brutally heavy at times, it’s all cut through with the absurdist humour that is also present at the band’s live shows. On stage, they’re joined by balaclava-clad best friend Eddie, whose entire job is to play video games and hold up signs indicating the (often ridiculous and lengthy) title to the next song his mates will play. Of his role in creating the album, Smith says, with however many pinches of salt you’d like to take: “He laid everything down and told us what to record. He’d whip us if we weren’t doing it quickly enough and was pretty horrible to work with to be honest. He was like Frank Zappa, dragging us by the hair back into the studio when we were out having a fag.”

Road, Pitchfork Festival Paris, SXSW, and Outbreak, UNIVERSITY announce they will be performing at Dia De Los Deftones, Deftones’ annual festival in San Diego, USA, on 1 November 2025. The band will also perform a run of UK and European headline dates this September - see the full list of live dates below.

• Fri 05/09/2025 Paradiso (Upstairs), Amsterdam Netherlands
• Sat 06/09/2025 Misty Fields Festival, Asten-Heusden (NL) Netherlands
• Mon 08/09/2025 La Mécanique Ondulatoire, Paris France
• Tue 09/09/2025 Aéronef, Lille, France
• Thu 11/09/2025 Schokoladen, Berlin Germany
• Sat 13/09/2025 Botanique, Brussels Belgium
• Mon 15/09/2025 Louisiana, Bristol United Kingdom
• Tue 16/09/2025 Where Else?, Margate United Kingdom
• Wed 17/09/2025 George Tavern, London United Kingdom
• Fri 19/09/2025 The Castle, Manchester United Kingdom
• Sun 21/09/2025 Hug & Pint, Glasgow United Kingdom
• Mon 22/09/2025 Brudenell Social Club (Community Room), Leeds United Kingdom
• Tue 23/09/2025 Hare & Hounds 2, Birmingham United Kingdom
• Sat 01/11/2025 Dia De Los Deftones, San Diego, United States