Empire of the Sun has never operated on anyone else’s timeline. The Australian duo — Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore, who take the road as Emperor Steele and Lord Littlemore — took eight years between Two Vines and Ask That God, and the explanation for that gap runs through a modular synthesizer festival in Tokyo in 2018, a pandemic shutdown that forced them to turn off every computer they owned, and a full rebuild of their studio setup from scratch. The record that emerged, their fourth, arrived in July 2024. Two years of touring later, they arrive at Moody Center on Monday, September 21, to close out the Ask That God era for good.
The 2026 leg — the Ask That God: Afterlife North American Tour — is explicitly framed as the final chapter of that record’s journey. Steele put it plainly: It feels like a very pivotal time. We have a new song to sing, we have to step into a new doorway — a new chapter.
That kind of framing, the deliberate closing of one door before whatever comes next, tends to produce shows that carry more weight than a standard cycle-support tour. When an artist calls the run an afterlife, the send-off tends to matter.
About Empire of the Sun
Empire of the Sun formed in Australia in 2007, born from a long creative partnership between Steele and Littlemore — two decades of collaboration by the time Ask That God landed. Their 2008 debut, Walking on a Dream, established the template from the first show: maximalist electronic pop, a theatrical visual language, and costuming that suggested some parallel civilization no one had mapped yet. The record went double platinum in Australia and gold in the United Kingdom, producing internationally charting singles including the title track.
Ice on the Dune (2013) and Two Vines (2016) followed, both charting in the Australian top ten. Then came the long quiet and the Tokyo sessions — the synthesizer festival sparked the writing, and the pandemic nearly swallowed the project whole before they could finish it. When they came back, they rebuilt from scratch. Littlemore, asked about the philosophy that got them through, was characteristically terse: The path of Empire is never typical.
Ask That God (2024) emerged from all of that — hooky singles in Cherry Blossom,
Changes,
Music On The Radio,
and The Feeling You Get,
and a record whose thematic center was optimism, transformation, and what Steele called rebirth. A digital deluxe edition followed in 2025, featuring Somebody’s Son
with Lindsey Buckingham. The Afterlife tour opened at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado on August 11 and has included festival appearances at Osheaga in Montréal and Outside Lands in San Francisco before turning toward the fall amphitheater run.
Polo & Pan and Midnight Generation are on the bill as special guests. There are no age restrictions for this show.
Venue Information
Moody Center is located at 2001 Robert Dedman Drive in Austin, Texas. The 15,000-capacity amphitheater is the city’s largest dedicated concert facility. A clear bag policy is in effect; showtimes are subject to change per venue policy.
Tickets
Tickets are available through Ticketmaster. Showtime is 7:30 PM CT on Monday, September 21, 2026.