On their debut album No Passion All Technique, Detroit's Protomartyr excelled at crafting a post-punk onslaught that was thrillingly breakneck and oppressive, showcasing a new band capable of stomping, shredding, and obliterating. The songs ranged from anthemic and rafter-reaching to churning and bleak, grounded by frontman Joe Casey's deep, looming vocals that moved seamlessly from a croon to a deranged bark. It was an impressive showing of both mastery and versatility.
On their follow-up, Under Color of Official Right, they've cleaned up their sound a bit and sanded down a few of their rough edges without becoming tepid or tame. This time around, the band's embraced a consistent ebb and flow, continually shifting back and forth from simmer to full-boil. For listeners well-versed in No Passion's steadfast ferocity, this new one may appear comparatively declawed, but the more subtle approach comes with more tonal and emotional nuance. Greg Ahee's ringing, hollow guitar clack on "Bad Advice" gives weight and urgency to a narrative about Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, while the tenderness of Scott Davidson's slow-burning bass intro on "What the Wall Said" is a perfect counterbalance to an imminent and overwhelming barrage of guitars. "Come & See" begins with guitar chords that are given space to ring before being enveloped by huge, oppressive waves of guitars, and the effect is oddly uplifting. The hooks are diverse in mood—dark, subtle, playful—but just as cohesive and powerful as they were on their first outing.
As they did with No Passion, Protomartyr seal the deal with Casey's lyrics. Often inspired by books and news stories and filtered through the band's deadpan abstractions, they don't always make perfect sense right away. Album opener "Maidenhead" is directly influenced by Patrick Hamilton's black comedy novel Hangover Square. It's about George Harvey Bone, a lonely alcoholic who suffers from spells where he feels no pleasure or pain. Casey sings about a "clack" in his brain, which triggers "dead moods". At the chorus, drummer Alex Leonard and Ahee ramp up their attack, and when things cool down again, Casey sings, "Maidenhead, here I come," referring to the happy place where Bone longs to return—where he can finally find respite from the darkness. "I have arrived."
But here's the hitch: When Bone reaches Maidenhead in the book, he isn't peaceful there—he's just as tortured as he always was. And as Protomartyr push out into the rest of their album, they're still mired in darkness. They outline betrayal, treason, extortion, corruption, bad dads, insufferable randos, and of course, violence. It's tempting to comb through the album to find clues that reveal Casey's initial inspirations, but going line by line and decoding its "secrets" is about as arbitrary a practice as naming every sample on a Girl Talk album: it's nice to know the details, but look at the big picture instead. The overall strength of Under Color of Official Right doesn't come from its big words, Detroit cred, or works-cited page; it's from lyrics that, while fraught with symbolism, feel emotionally resonant and, sometimes, viscerally unpleasant. If you listen carefully to Casey's voice, this stuff can hit hard.
Perhaps it's the seething, self-assured vocals, but the album's most bleak phrases are also some of its most memorable. "Stumbling around for a hand in the dark/ Slapping you down, choking you out," he casually croons on "What the Wall Said". A vengeful son kills off a pack of barfly dads in "Scum, Rise!", while Davidson locks into a rollicking groove during "Tarpeian Rock", named for the Ancient Roman cliff where murderers and traitors were flung for their crimes. Casey lists the different sorts of people who should meet their demise—emotional cripples, internet personas, rich crusties, adults dressed as children, and so on—while his swirling, primal vocals insist, "THROW THEM FROM THE ROCK".
Amid all the chaos and fuzz, the album's crown jewel might be "Violent"—the most calm, spare track of the bunch. It's a bedtime story with multiple layers: a bandit about to kill a man for snoring too loud, a dark shape in the water that's about to sink a boat, a husband poisoning his wife, cats hunting mice, dogs eating their young. "If it's violent, it's understood," sings Casey, and that's the reality they present throughout Under Color of Official Right: no matter where you look—in books, at your loved ones, at your pets, at the sports bar—there's violence and death and destruction. It's a bummer, but at least Protomartyr wrote and recorded an impressive album around that idea.
