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. 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 '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.
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. 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.
But that aside and with the beautiful artwork and packaging, the disc is an extremely healthy offering. 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 issue is very, very good. Too many notes? 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.
Review by Conor Fynes Prog Reviewer. 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.
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.
It also saw the release of the band's much anticipated fourth studio long-player, Volition , which was entirely crowd-funded via Indiegogo. Bassist Arif Mirabdolbaghi left the fold the following year and was replaced by producer Cameron McLellan , who would come on as an unofficial member.
In , the group announced that their next release, an EP called Pacific Myth , would be subscription-based, with the six tracks to be released through Bandcamp once per month to paid subscribers until March Their fifth LP, Palimpsest , arrived in June of , embracing the band's outspoken politics with reflections on contemporary U.
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