Year Of Metal #087: Protest The Hero - Scurrilous
To continue my deeply unfair and possibly somewhat xenophobic generalisation, Canada is the Sweden of North America. There’s plenty of great stuff coming out of there but, give or take a Joni Mitchell or a Shania Twain, they’re all at least a little bit lame. Neil Young, New Pornographers, even the late great Len Cohen - they’ve all got an uncool foible in them.
Which brings us to Protest The Hero. With Rush now defunct, they may be top of the heap as far as Great White Northern prog metal bands go. Since 2013 they’ve operated independently and rely on a ride or die cult following to keep things moving. To some extent I shudder to think how indulgent those two self released records are, because they don’t exactly sound stymied on 2011’s Scurrilous. It’s bananas stuff from the off - they’ve literally played 16 notes by the time we’re two seconds into opener “C’est La Vie”, the first of many deeply technical freak outs that fill this LP.
The technical excess of Scurrilous isn’t my thing as a rule, but as always there are exceptions. I love the solo on this first track, particularly the backing track’s total inability to stick to a time signature. It’s only a brief passage but I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be to learn to play it. Talking of showmanship and things that aren’t always my cuppa, against my better judgement I’m well into vocalist Rody Walker’s performance here. It’s the kind of operatic excess that would normally be anathema to me, but I don’t think there’s any other way to perform on tracks as batty as these. Every now and then he breaks into a bark or a yelp that feels particularly real in contrast to the artifice we hear elsewhere.
When they want to, they’re perfectly capable of writing a poppy hook or dipping into punk/emo sounds. “Tandem” is one of the grabbiest tracks on the album - it’s restless still, but in comparison to what we hear elsewhere, it’s a lot more straightforward. The chorus soars thanks to a great, heroic little guitar line. At one point Walker howls “I hope she knows how much I respect her,” which I’m afraid to say really makes me laugh, as nice a thing as that is to say.
A lot of the punkier and harder edged material is saved for the back half of the album, as though they’ve worn themselves out with all the technical trickery and just decide to go direct. It works like gangbusters for me. “Tongue-splitter” is one of the best - the riff’s still built around an endless stream of semiquavers, but there’s a stickiness to this part that some of the more frantic hooks lack; if you’re particularly fleet of lip, you can probably whistle this one. They’re maybe cutting a little too close to My Chemical Romance territory (in that at times it sounds an awful lot like “Helena”), but it’s a much better sound than the proggery we get elsewhere.
Ultimately while the record isn’t exactly to my taste, I found it absolutely flew by when listening to it. It’s not excessively long at just under 45 minutes but it’s incredibly dense; that’ll often lead to an exhausting experience, but not so much here. While I can’t help but snicker at some of what these guys are putting down, there’s more than enough that I genuinely like, and the bursts of cool songwriting combined with killer chops and a charming lameness make this an LP to root for.
