Billy Nomates, the project of the Bristol-based songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Tor Maries, today releases a new video for “Nothin Worth Winnin”, taken from her acclaimed latest album, Metalhorse.
The video for “Nothin Worth Winnin”, directed by Tia Perkins, features the pairing of Tor and comedian Paul Foot on an arcade spree, accompanied by a sample of slot machines on the stripped-back synth punk track.
A rumination on the turbulence of navigating the music industry, Tor speaks about the track: “You get on these rides and you’re like… this ain’t fucking built right. Like, should I put my nephew on this?” she laughs. “You arrive into this brilliant place, but if you look too closely you can see the bolts coming off.” Fretting over rental rooms and ticking clocks over a taut interplay of synths, occasionally interrupted by cries of frustration in the background, she concludes it’s better to miss the original target anyway. “At the start I was here trying to shoot to win,” she shrugs. “Now I’m just shooting at the sky.”
Watch the video for “Nothin Worth Winnin” below.
Tor will also be playing 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. 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.” Tickets for the show, which kicks off Billy Nomates’ UK and European tour, are on sale here.
Billy Nomates’ tour includes 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
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.
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