Protean Threat

It's just as weird, fiery, hooky, strange, and avant-punk as anything they've released; the unbroken hot streak they're on continues to throw off sparks like an overheating amp that's about to catch fire.

This album is a success, albeit one that does little to distance itself from the releases that came before it. Each track shares the percussive and wonky tone of Face Stabber but Dwyer knowingly infuses enough melody into the highlights to make for a few key standouts.

John Dwyer returns to thrashing, galloping warped punk, albeit with a more pronounced funk feel. [Oct 2020, p.34]

The cool thing about Protean Threat is that he’s got the beast and the collar. He can let things run wild in complicated ways while also keeping it wholly and brilliantly under control. Let’s not mince words. This is one of the best rock albums of 2020.

The blistering garage punk, hazy psychedelia, and Krautrock synth noodling that have come to form the pillars of Osees’ music are all tightly packed into concise forms and delivered at a brisk pace here. Fortunately, the tracks do not feel truncated. In stripping the indulgences back, the band delivers the best aspects of their fuzzy guitar freakouts without sacrificing the groove-based jams.

Even though Protean Threat proves to be an adventurous, quirky and downright strange album at times, Osees manage keep the whole thing sonically grounded and consumable, all while keeping Dwyer's winning streak impossibly alive.

A record that otherwise skids wildly across art-rock history leaving steaming tyre tracks in its wake.

Hectically enjoyable LP. [Oct 2020, p.87]