Relatives In Descent

After a year of extensive touring in support of 2015’s The Agent Intellect, Protomartyr returned to their practice space in a former optician's office in Southwest Detroit. Inspired by The Raincoats' Odyshape, Mica Levi's orchestral compositions, and a recent collaboration with post-punk legends The Pop Group, for Rough Trade's 40th anniversary, the band began writing new music that artfully expanded on everything they’d recorded up until that point. The result is Relatives In Descent, Protomartyr's fourth full-length and Domino debut. Though not a concept album, it presents twelve variations on a theme: the unknowable nature of truth, and the existential dread that often accompanies that unknowing. This, at a moment when disinformation and garbled newspeak have become a daily reality.

The fourth album from the literary Detroit rock band Protomartyr is sinuous and allusive, dense and at times dizzying. It contains a constant sense of unease about the world and its future.

You haven’t heard a moment in music this year quite as bilious as when in “Windsor Hum,” after 90 seconds of tense, dissonant guitar, the sky ruptures and Protomartyr singer Joe Casey sneers “everything’s fine,” letting the “n” ring like a bell as a plague of vapor descends. The song is named after a phenomenon in…

Protomartyr return with an outstanding fourth LP. Consistency is key, and they keep on hitting it. Hard.

Bold, brash and unwavering, Protomartyr's 'Relatives In Descent' is a masterclass in gloomy post-punk. Get NME's verdict.

There isn’t a shade of black in the post-punk spectrum Protomartyr can’t execute with aplomb.

As the lead singer and lyricist for Protomartyr, Casey's lyrics often feel like a barrage of non sequiturs, stacks of intriguing yet unrelated statements that don't cohere until you give them a moment to sink in -- and when they do, they hit like a hammer.

Protomartyr turn grappling with the inexplicable nature of all things into something genuinely fruitful, and Relatives in Descent could be their best record yet.

Protomartyr aren't going to revolutionize guitar music. That's a big ask for any rock band in 2017, where many acts are hyper-literate, fier...

Protomartyr frontman Joe Casey does have a sense of humor, even if on record it may not be "haha" funny.

'Relatives in Descent' by Protomartyr: On our review of 'Relatives in Descent' Protomartyr push the boundaries of their art without becoming inaccessible.