Relatives in Descent

With a sound that maintains relevancy in the modern age as the band keeps true to a form that’s existed thirty-plus years, Protomartyr’s Detroit Rock interpretation of post-punk seems to gain something with every album they produce, a sensibility that’s somehow detectible but difficult to define or pinpoint.

The band's fourth and best album to date, there is no denying his prowess as a Nick Cave for a new generation, even if, ironically, Casey is closer to Cave's than the rest of his band or most of his audience.

Their quality of music and precision is outstanding, and while referencing so many of our favourite artists from eras been and gone, they perform and compose in a new light with such integrity that makes them a step above the rest.

While his band has grown into a post-punk monster, Casey, too, has moved beyond his personal frets and frustrations and developed into a lyricist capable of clear and compelling commentary. He’s a voice worth listening to. It took a while, but thank goodness he found his way to the front of a band.

With each album the Detroit quartet retains its deceptively casual air while pulling triumphant moments out of the noise. It can also conjure surprising tenderness when you least expect, or turn darkly comic in one verse, and lash out in the next.

A belief in the everyday people carrying on pushes Relatives in Descent beyond petty complaint, and closer towards perseverance and warmth.

It’s devastating music uniquely attuned to our current cultural moment, stridently political but less interested in dictating the problems or their solutions than in mapping the emotional topography of being alive and terrified in 2017.

The Detroit rock veterans’ most refined release yet, Relatives in Descent is a sermon on truth, anxiety, and our lack of understanding of the world around us. As ever, Casey is our trusty narrator, leading us through the darkness with his signature brand of wit, wisdom, and bitterness; like a winning combination of Drunk Uncle and Mark E. Smith, he is both commanding and pitiful in his delivery.

Relatives in Descent is a gloomy, menacing album, not for the listener looking for a good time. But from pointing out issues within their home city of Detroit to the disastrous place the world is in, Protomartyr are too smart to ignore the problems in the world. They are watching it burn and giving you their take in elaborate, intricate detail.

Bruised but still brawling, Relatives channels the horror and embattled hope of our times with a vital insistence.

While mediating the difference between bitterness and hooks was such a hallmark of past releases, it feels good to hear them find catharsis here, even if it’s in small doses.

A dystopian, focused pessimism that sounds (unfortunately) exactly like the world outside, but doesn’t sound quite like another band on the planet. A perfect soundtrack to nagging doubts and creeping realisations.

As America crumbles, Protomartyr have proved that they can be that cereus, blooming in the dark times we inhabit--and continue blossoming into a formidable and vital band.

Relatives in Descent manages to sound more thoughtful and introspective than 2015's The Agent Intellect without sapping the strength of this great band; quite simply, as a bit of record-making, this is Protomartyr's most impressive accomplishment to date.

Their fourth LP is their best yet. [Nov 2017, p.112]

Now, on its fourth album, the band is moving toward an idiom that’s more flexible and contrasty yet just as gripping: Protomartyr’s own post-post-punk.

Very few other bands are working at the level of aggression, precision, intensity and intelligence that Protomartyr musters. Relatives in Descent is yet another record from this outfit that you can’t afford to miss.

Singer Joe Casey tacks flattened vocals to songs that move with a bristling crawl and occasionally explode into repressed fury. [Nov 2016, p.35]

This Detroit outfit have restrained their post-punk intentions somewhat, playing with more textured compositions rather than blunt assault of their earlier material. This proves to be the perfect swirling yet steady backdrop for frontman Joe Casey to spin his cheap beer-fueled freeform yarns of lost souls and tortured romantics. [Oct 2017, p.83]

At its best, Relatives in Descent makes guitar music feel radical again, capturing both timely and timeless anxieties.

Protomartyr galvanize themselves into a more driving and forceful mode on the likes of Don’t Go To Anacita and Male Plague, wherein lie some of Relatives in Descent's strongest hooks, and ultimately it’s the strength and clarity of the ideas put down that could make this their best record yet.

Relatives in Descent, right down to its title, is an enigma of free thought and aggressive, yet powerful sentiment.

Equally informed by universal human crises as it is by contemporary imbroglios, the album aims to disorient, alienate, and dismay the listener. The band is usually able to do all three in a single song. Often in one line.