Protomartyr

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Detroit’s Protomartyr today share a new video for their rollicking single ‘Don’t Go To Anacita’ – watch the video HERE. The song is one of the most anthemic the band have written, and is one of the highlights off their critically acclaimed new album, Relatives In Descent. Singer Joe Casey described the fictional town of Anacita in a recent interview with NPR Music. “From touring around America you get to see all sorts of municipalities,” says Casey, “and I picture Anacita as an affluent suburb that looks quaint and respectable but maybe has too many cops for the population size. Like, maybe the next town over is a little more down-on-its-heel and the border between the two is stark in its sharpness.”

The surreal video, inspired equally by obvious touchstone ‘Stairway to Lenin’ by Zbigniew Rybzynski and R.E.M.’s ‘Imitation of Life,’ was directed by Yoonha Park, who said “I wanted to make a visual that recreated the feeling of scanning over a large, densely populated image, like a Breughel painting or Where’s Waldo?. I wanted to convey a feeling of false progress and the idea that every new horror that meets us is part of a never-ending continuum. Joe Casey’s lyrics are chock full of references both contemporary and classical, often in the same song. It creates a really unique visual field that conveys the exact flavor of dread I find myself feeling a lot lately.” 

The band finishes up their US tour this weekend and will be heading to Europe and UK next month.

Watch ‘Don’t Go To Anacita’ HERE

Praise for Relatives In Descent:
“Political, environmental, epistemological, social, familial and individual anxieties fuel the latest songs by Protomartyr, a band from Detroit that has been reclaiming the jagged, muscular dissonances of post-punk for 21st-century America.” The New York Times (Album of the Week)

“Sensational, bloodied but unbowed post-punk” The Guardian 5*

“Over the course of four full-length albums, the Detroit-based band has produced a collection of lyrically dense, deeply philosophical (and usually very loud) songs that grapple with some of life’s thorniest questions: What does it mean to be human? What is truth? What is the nature of good and evil?” NPR Music

“Masters at articulating a detached sense of anger and disgust” Uncut 8/10

“Is there any guitar band quite as raw as Protomartyr? Closer to Swans or Glenn Branca than their peers, Protomartyr stack simple sounds into a churning, impenetrable wave of kinetic energy.” SPIN

“Detroit post-punks hit a new peak – their best record yet” Q 4*

“Adventurous, confrontational and surprising, ‘Relatives In Descent’ will make you think even as it makes you feel” The Big Issue 4*

Relatives In Descent is available to buy on vinyl, CD and digital download. Buy: Physical / Digital / Stream

Protomartyr Online
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Listen HERE
Relatives In Descent out Friday
Played “Boatomartyr” record release show last week in Detroit.

“Masters at articulating a detached sense of anger and disgust” Uncut 8/10
“A masterpiece” DIY 4*
“A punk album of dark grooves and hidden beauty.” Loud & Quiet 10/10 Album of the Week
“A vital missive” CRACK 8/10
“Protomartyr at their most unsettling and their most accessible” Stereogum

This Friday, Protomartyr release their fourth album, Relatives In Descent, their debut for new label home Domino.  Prior to its release, the band share the third single off Relatives, and perhaps one of their most straight-forward and anthemic songs to date. ‘Don’t Go To Anacita’ takes place in a fictional town of singer Joe Casey’s invention, a sort of everytown created to catch Casey’s ire.

LISTEN TO ‘DON’T GO TO ANACITA’ HERE

Late last week in the US, CDs of Relatives In Descent were surreptitiously slipped into the jukeboxes of several dive bars in Detroit and New York. People in those cities hoping to get a “pre-release stream” of the album are encouraged to head to The Levee and Old Stanley’s in Brooklyn, Bumbo’s in Hamtramck, or Bronx Bar in Detroit, and load their laundry quarters into those music-streaming machines.

Additionally, last Friday marked the band’s sold out Detroit record release show, which developed into something of a mini-festival. Onboard the Detroit Princess riverboat, the band were joined by friends METZ, Preoccupations, ADULT., Tyvek, and Matthew Dear, as well as local DJs, food purveyors, charities, a screening of the films like Captain Ron and Waterworld, and cutouts where fans could take photos as “bike guy” for example.

Listen to the previously shared ‘My Children’ here and ‘A Private Understanding’ here.

Full list of upcoming US, UK & EU tour dates can be found HERE

Relatives In Descent is available to pre-order now on limited edition purple/white starburst vinyl, CD and digital download. Pre-order: Physical / Digital

Protomartyr Online:
Website | Facebook

Featured Photo by Doug Coombe

Protomartyr share new song ‘My Children’ – stream HERE Relatives In Descent out Sept 29th on Domino Announce international touring dates

Today, Protomartyr share ‘My Children’, the second single off their forthcoming album Relatives In Descent (out Sept 29th on Domino). A song about legacy, about what we pass on to those that come after us, ‘My Children’ is an urgent follow up to the first single, the gloriously epic ‘A Private Understanding’.

Listen to ‘My Children’ here

Listen on YouTube here

Anxiety about the precarious nature of reality is a recurring thread on Protomartyr’s 4th full-length and Domino debut. Though not a concept album, it presents twelve variations on a theme: the unknowable nature of truth, and the existential dread that often accompanies that unknowing. After months of rehearsal, the band decamped to Los Angeles for two weeks in March of 2017, to record with Sonny DiPerri (Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors), who co-produced the record and helped capture the band’s long-simmering vision for something more complex, but no less visceral.

Previously shared track ‘A Private Understanding’ is the album’s opening statement and a wellspring from which the following eleven songs flow. At once beautiful and brutal, it mutates from drum-led oddity to unlikely anthem, with some of Casey’s most potent lyrical work at its centre.

Praise for ‘A Private Understanding’:
“There is an entire short story’s worth of action here, but this sentence turns it into something else — a frozen pose, a single moment we can gaze at indefinitely.” – The New York Times Magazine
“‘A Private Understanding’ is another Protomartyr song that rewards repeat listens—to sit with its poetry and tease out its generous hooks” – Pitchfork
“Frontman Joe Casey’s brand of dour, erudite charisma has never been more engaging, with allusions to Stalin and the beliefs of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus sitting next to pained, direct outbursts (“she’s just trying to reach you,” Casey sings over and over as the guitars build into a typhoon at the end).” – Noisey
“Over an off-kilter drumbeat, bellower-in-chief Joe Casey gives a vision of America in 2017–’this age of blasting trumpets, paradise for fools’–before heading into murkier waters.” – SPIN

Watch the video for ‘A Private Understanding’ here

Stream ‘A Private Understanding’ here

Protomartyr have announced worldwide tour dates in support of the album, including a hometown album release party on the Detroit Princess, a 4-level historical cruise ship. The party, which will feature performances from Protomartyr, Adult, Metz, Tyvek, and Preoccupations, also includes a scenic cruise. You can find full tour dates and ticket links HERE

Relatives In Descent is available to pre-order now on limited edition coloured vinyl, CD and digital download. Pre-order: Physical / Digital

Protomartyr Online:
Website | Facebook

Featured Photo Credit : Daniel Topete