Empire State Bastard have revealed how former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo got involved with their extreme metal band – and why they took him to Greggs.Empire State Bastard is the new extreme metal project created by Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil and former Oceansize frontman Mike Vennart, and features Lombardo on drums alongside Bitch Falcon’s bassist Naomi Macleod.Speaking in a recent interview for NME’s In Conversation series, Neil revealed that the pair spent two weeks talking about drummers who could “play like Dave Lombardo” before one day during the pandemic they said: “Shall we just fucking get Dave Lombardo’s address and email him?”“Within 24 hours he got back and was like, ‘This is fucking great, what are you thinking?’ We’d never even met him, but ended up with this on-the-phone relationship for about a year or so,” Neil continued.“He really understood what we were trying to do with this album and band. He’s so busy and gets approached for a lot of things, but as soon as he came back and said, ‘This is special, I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna play with you and make this record’ – that’s when we went, ‘Right, this is fucking happening.'”“We had to shift into gear, because if Dave Lombardo says it’s a good bunch of songs then you know you’re onto something! We’ve been doing this for two decades, but he makes us want to do it for another two decades,” said Neil.