PROTEST THE HERO

The case can and will almost certainly be made by many that this is Protest the Hero's finest record. And while I can certainly understand this position, I don't quite share that same level of enthusiasm. For my personal taste, Protest the Hero is at their best when they pull together frantic technical riffage with big and maniacal choruses and melodic passages. There are just too many moments on this record (e.g. "Migrant Mother", "Rivet", etc.) where the post-hardcore influence is just too dominant. If you are a prog fan with a soft spot for the likes of My Chemical Romance, this album is all world. For the rest of us, a 3 of 5 stars will suffice.

After months wandering through some nice, but quickly forgottent tunes, I discovered PTH for 1 months, thanks to a review of Palimpsest on SputnikMusic. Since then, I just listen to this album on a daily basis. I listened to other PTH albums, but they sound like rehearsals for this one, which seems to embody all what PTH has been aiming to, during its now 13 years career.

I has all what a prog fan would dream of : themes carefully chosen (catastrophies in the 20-30's USA), epic drive, poetic and yet down to earth lyrics, complex time signatures, impossible guitar riffs, strong and full soundscape... Rody Walker really shines on this one with his operatic, catarthic singing style.

I signed in just to write this short review because I really wondered why there was not even one. I hope it will encourage others to review this album more in detail.

My advice is to listen to it from the beginning to the end, and then to start again. At first, songs sound a bit the same, but soon, you will be amazed by their individual beauty.

Personally i don't care about this concept. This is metalcore and i can't understand the lyrics anyway, but for those who do care about these things, it is a nice story that weaves around the brutal metal music with progressive layerings. If you ask me the music of PROTEST THE HERO is a hybrid of The Mars Volta and Between The Buried And Me. The Volta comparisons hold true on a few levels. Firstly Rody Walker's high pitched range and vocal style really sounds a lot like Cedric Bixler-Zavala's. I had to check the first time hearing this to make sure this wasn't another project of Cedric. Secondly, the song structures remind me a lot of The Mars Volta's as well, at least their most rocking parts. The intermissions have similarities as well but PROTEST doesn't go fully into psychedelic Krautrock tangents. There are similar guitar tones, vocal styles etc.

On the Buried And Me side of the equation, the metalcore is crisp and staccato with progressive intros and outros and odd time signatures that are abundant and this really has a lot in common. If you ever wondered what The Mars Volta would sound like if they truly ventured into brutal metal with lightning fast guitar riffs that drift from chaotic Psyopus type dissonance to melodic neoclassical shredding with pummeling riffs and percussion while dropping a big chunk of the Latin and psychedelic influences, then you don't have to go to an alternate universe to find out, it can be found in this one and PROTEST THE HERO sounds just like that to me. I don't find this band to be as adventurous as say "Colors" by Between The Buried In Me which leaves no rock unturned for influences, but this album finds a lot of sounds to incorporate into the melodic metalcore to dish out. While metalcore isn't usually the sub genre of metal i mostly gravitate towards, i do find some of the progressive types very satisfying and this one has earned some staying power in my world. It is an album that delivers in being extremely brutal, soft and sensual and above all maintains melodic developments throughout its run.

This time it worked, and the material and performance will likely please both fans and the curious. In fact Volition would be a great starter. A touch more accessible than previous releases and with mild influence from guys like Opeth, LTE, Metallica, Coheed&Cambria, and Ron Jarzombek (who guests on a cut), my one complaint is that there are simply more songs here than necessary and the band's highly distinctive sound becomes monotone after a point. But that aside and with the beautiful artwork and packaging, the disc is an extremely healthy offering. 'Clarity' has stuttering rhythms, great chordal colors, and stuck-pig harmonics; Jarzombek's tech candy abounds on 'Drumhead Trial' with Chris Adler's (not Moe Carlson's) furious drums; Slick and spinning 'Tilting Against Windmills' is insatiable, absolutely killer, continued through 'Without Prejudice'.

Roddy Walker weaves his vocals with ease into 'Yellow Teeth', as on mid-paced and catchy 'Platos Tripartite' (a potential hit if it'd been under 4 minutes). But by 'Mist', an otherwise great track, our ears begin to tire and by 'Animal Bones' we've heard enough to know PtH's 2013 issue is very, very good. Too many notes? No. But, I would say with a fair amount of confidence, too many songs.

This album changed that, together with many awesome bands i discovered through progarchives, it was something completely fresh, unique, crazy and over the top. You can find a lot of different influences in it ranging from punk, metalcore, mathmetal, scandinavian deathmetal and prog, but most importantly this band has it's own sound.

Thanks to the "love it or hate it" vocals from Rody Walker that stay far away from the usual metal clichés and crazy songwriting skills that are both extremely complex and over the top melodic, it is very difficult to put this band in a genre or even to compare them with other bands. Which is impressive for a genre that has a few dozen Meshuggah/Dillinger clones

In my opinion this is their best album so far and the best place to start if you want to get into this band.

In the past, I have often used this band as an example of the flash-over-substance mentality that quite a bit of progressive metal has. Admittedly, I briefly liked what the band had to offer when I was first introduced to them, but it was not too long before I realized that they had a 'twinkie' mentality to their music; being that it looked it on the outside, but as soon as I dug a little deeper, it was clear that there wasn't all too much to hold my interest. I would never deny that the band are very skilled musicians, and with their third offering 'Scurrilous', they are still dragged down by some issues that have been stinging since their inception.

'Scurrilous' essentially picks up where the band's second album 'Fortress' left off and offers some more of the same, with few developments to speak of. For the most part, this is an improvement over Protest's generally sporadic and irritating sophomore, and while there are none of the same standout tracks that 'Fortress' was only partially redeemed by, 'Scurrilous' is a much more consistent record, and somewhat emphasizes what I liked about them beforehand. In terms of what I like about Protest The Hero, the list begins and ends with the guitars. Tim Miller and Luke Hoskin are phenomenal musicians, and 'Scurrilous' is a virtually unrelenting showcase of their skills, delivering riff upon impressive riff of distinct arpeggios and progginess aplenty. While I may not be nearly as enthusiastic about any other quality of the band, the guitars are essential enough to the sound of 'Scurrilous' that it becomes something of a decent listen, and could have even been a brilliant one, were it not for some painfully unpleasant aspects in their sound.

The lesser of the two main concerns I have with the sound of Protest The Hero is the songwriting. While there are plenty of awesome riffs and technically sound moments for listeners to be dazzled by, the way things are structured doesn't give any sense of drama or tension, or even a slight sense of build up. While the unrelenting technicality and speed of the album is not necessarily a bad thing in of itself, the is little dynamic here, and even within the context of a song itself, the ideas rarely compliment each other. The songwriting always feels rhapsodic and without direction. The songwriting is far from the worst aspect of Protest The Hero's sound however.

The thing that really kills Protest The Hero for me are the vocals of Rody Walker, whose adolescent howl has put me off virtually from square one. Although gifted with an admittedly impressive vocal range, the sound of his voice doesn't pass me as being much more than an angry whine, and his voice has an irritating sense of vibrato to it that I can only interpret as the vocal equivalent of television static. Walker's voice exemplifies why I cannot like this band; he warbles every note to the point of overindulgence, and when it comes to the actual sound of his voice, it is fairly shallow, despite his obvious ability to go wherever he wants with his delivery. Not to mention that the vocals are paired with some equally irritating lyrics; while Protest The Hero's lyrics here are somewhat better than they were with 'Fortress' and are at times even witty, it is ironic that the times when Rody enunciates the words most clearly are the times when he decides that swearing is the only way to express his youthful angst. Of course, like anything, so-called 'bad language' can be used appropriately and powerfully, but here, it almost feels like they are trying to force the words in, in order to get some sort of badass credibility they would otherwise be lacking. The result is fairly laughable.

As one can likely tell within one paragraph of this review, I do not like Protest The Hero. While they are all skilled and flashy, the technical wankery does not tend to work in their favour when they don't have much else to back it up with. Luckily however, 'Scurrilous' earns points for me, even if only because it is a great step up from 'Fortress'. There is also some brilliant guitar work here, and I could easily see 'Scurrilous' being a surefire winner for me if it were kept a purely instrumental album. As it stands though, the good elements here are only somewhat worth bearing with the negative.

Unlike the two previous releases, Scurrilous is not a conceptual piece of music, instead the band takes the opportunity to reflect upon issues that are clearly of concern to them and I definitely support this shift. What I'm having more trouble with are the music arrangements which clearly haven't progressed much since Fortress. We still get that same distinct blend of Metalcore and Progressive Metal, which has unfortunately become less original over the course of the last few years with imitators like the band Treeburning becoming more of a rule than an exception as of lately.

I vividly recall the band stating, in a recent interview, that the new album was going to be even more progressive than their previous outings but I'm not sure that this is true. There's literally nothing here that we haven't already heard on Fortress, aside maybe from female lead vocals on Hair-Trigger and the previously mentioned lyrical shift. Another disappointment comes in the fact that the album doesn't start with a great opener like No Stars Over Bethlehem or Bloodmeat. C'est La Vie is not the great single that the band is trying to market it as, good but not among their best.

Having said all that, I still find it difficult not to enjoy this album. This is literally Fortress - part 2 and if you don't have a problem with that then definitely give this one a go!

***** star songs: Tandem (5:15) Tapestry (4:34)

**** star songs: C'est La Vie (3:32) Hair-Trigger (4:49) Moonlight (4:49) Dunsel (4:53) Termites (3:56) Tongue-Splitter (4:34) Sex Tapes (4:39)

*** star songs: The Reign of Unending Terror (3:23)

Protest The Hero have not been a band I've been much endeared to lately. Although my first impression with their second album 'Fortress' initially struck a chord with me, it didn't take long before the music began to grow tiresome. Although their first record 'Kezia' is a step above 'Fortress' in terms of musicality and intelligence, the end result is the same; an adolescent romp through progressive territory that comes out feeling fairly lukewarm. Although there are certainly excellent things to hear on 'Kezia', I am left to wonder how much it is worth to sift through the weak parts to strike the gold.

In what is almost certainly a matter of personal taste, it is the voice of lead singer Rody Walker which may turn me off most to the music Protest The Hero plays on 'Kezia'. Although a strong range is evident here, the sound of Walker's voice amounts to little more than an adolescent yelp. Especially during his more technically expressive moments, Walker is quick to adopt a fairly whiny tinge in his voice that is no bit pleasant to the ears, and does little to distinguish Protest from the legions of angsty new metalcore bands. The band is clever enough to change pace now and then with some female vocals and screams, neither of which ever amount to anything much better, but still more tolerable than Rody's cleans.

Luckily, Rody Walker is the only sour aspect of the band's performance. Especially for their ages, the instrumentalists of the band are well advanced beyond their years, and this shows most profoundly in the guitar work of Tim Millar and Luke Hoskin. Having mastered modular riffing and tapping from this debut onward, it is their strong work that the rest of the band builds around, although the bass and drums do well to fill out the sound. To showcase these skills, each song on 'Kezia' is beautifully arranged, featuring multiple layers of guitars, plenty of different neat ideas here and there, and a tendency to throw light and heavier moments into the course of one song; something that hasn't seen so much success in metalcore.

Unfortunately, while the music is played with precision and everything conceivable is done to make the music complex and enjoyable, the songwriting generally lacks depth and comes across as shallow, especially after a handful of listens. While Protest The Hero has invested all of their efforts into giving as much flash as possible with 'Kezia', there is no suggestion to me that there is anything worth going back for after becoming familiar with the flashy riffs and technical showcases. With that in mind, the album grows weaker with each subsequent listen, although I'll be the first to admit that the initial force of the album is quite admirable.

'Kezia' has been lauded as a masterpiece by fans of the band, and in some parts of the record, I can certainly see why. However, although the band's technical skills as flaunted here to no end and the record has some decent initial shock value, Protest The Hero have some serious issues with their craft to change or fix before I could ever call myself a fan of them.