Protomartyr’s seventh album Hotel Usona (short for United States of North America) creates a fitting soundtrack as the country is pummeled by bad reviews. The Detroit veteran band envisions their homeland as a decrepit hotel where one of the TV channels is a live feed from Trump-Kennedy Center. The hotel is coincidentally located in Anacita, a fictional coastal town created by Casey for 2017’s Relatives in Descent. It’s the kind of place where the “liberal-minded close their eyes and dream of technology and kombucha.”
Category: Protomartyr
Protomartyr :: Formal Growth In The Desert
This is Protomartyr’s sixth album, arriving out of a maelstrom of uncertainty and loss. The sound has turned slower, weightier and more violent. Where the band began in a spiked Fall-ish spatter, its songs now move with a ponderous nearly metallic heft.
Transmissions :: Joe Casey of Protomartyr
This week on our weekly talk show, Transmissions: Joe Casey of Protomartyr. One of the most exciting rock bands of the last decade, the Detroit-based post punk band will release its fifth album, Ultimate Success Today July 17th. The word prophetic isn’t a stretch. With its references to disease, institutional brutality, and gross inequality—symptoms of “a cosmic grief, beyond all comprehension”—the new record matches the apocalyptic mood of the US, and much of the world, in 2020. But it also speaks to the continued growth of the Protomartyr aesthetic, pairing contributions by players associated with free jazz and experimental music with post-punk rhythms.
Protomartyr: No Passion All Technique
2012’s No Passion All Technique set up Protomartyr as purveyors of midwest existentialism and raging post-punk. Newly reissued and expanded, revisiting the album reveals how much about Protomartyr was in place from the very start. “I thought, ‘Here’s my chance to get this all out,” says frontman Joe Casey.
Protomartyr :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
A funny thing happens toward the end of “Cowards Starve,” the second song on Detroit post-punk quartet Protomartyr’s third album, The Agent Intellect . Singer Joe Casey delivers a weird, cutting line, as a synth buzzes in the […]
AD / Blundertown Present :: Protomartyr @ The Bootleg, May 24th
Saturday night, May 24th, Aquarium Drunkard and Blundertown present Protomartyr @ The Bootleg Theatre. Don’t miss this shit… as noted earlier , this LP is one of our favorite rippers of the year. The Intelligence and
Protomartyr :: Under Color Of Official Right
A protomartyr: the first person to be martyred in a particular country. A person, therefore, who is set apart–who sets themself apart–from their environment by guarding their integrity. A person who is singular in a […]