No Passion All Technique

When PROTOMARTYR—vocalist Joe Casey, guitarist Greg Ahee, bassist Scott Davidson, drummer Alex Leonard—stepped into a studio together for the first time, in November of 2011, they didn’t know they were about to record an album. With only four hours of studio time booked and one case of beer between them, their plan was to walk out with enough songs for a seven-inch single. Instead, at the suggestion of engineer Chris Koltay, the newly formed Detroit outfit recorded as much as they possibly could, in what little time they had. They left with 21 songs—enough material for two singles *and* a full-length album that, years later, is still vital listening. Sold out and out of print shortly after its original release on Urinal Cake Records in 2012, NO PASSION ALL TECHNIQUE is a sometimes messy look at one of rock’s most magnetic bands—and lyricists—just as they were coming to life. Primal, cerebral, heartbreaking, funny—it’s an accidental tour de force that’s also become an unlikely collector’s item. “My memory is shot,” Casey says, “but I appreciate now, looking back, how raw and off-the-cuff it was. There’s tons of mistakes in it and that wasn’t because we planned on it. We still can’t really admit that it’s as good as it is. You never want to say that your first is the best, but I’m happy that the first ended up not being terrible. It gave us doorway to what we’d want to do later.”

Although Protomartyr's debut album takes several Detroit reference points in its stride, it's more than "a Detroit record": Their characters aren't hollow archetypes, but people with ideas, struggles, and stories set to dextrously played speed punk, psych melodies, and gentle fingerpicking.

Protomartyr had been together for about a year when they booked four hours of time at a Detroit recording studio, hoping to record enough material for a 7" single. By the time those 240 minutes were up, they had managed to lay down basic tracks for a full album, and the local Urinal Cake label released No Passion All Technique in 2012. Compared to their subsequent work, No Passion is rough in both concept and execution, and it occasionally resembles a live rehearsal tape more than a studio album. But all the elements of what would make Protomartyr one of the best bands to emerge from the Midwest in the 2010s were in place, and there's a feeling of reckless discovery in these performances that's tremendously exciting. These recordings capture Protomartyr when their punk influences were at their strongest; there was already an adventurous chaos in Greg Ahee's guitar work as he twists his figures to his will (Kevin Boyer of Tyvek also contributed "surplus guitar"), and bassist Scott Davidson and drummer Alex Leonard were on their way to finding grooves that split the difference between lean rock & roll and subdued funk.