Protomartyr Returns With Scathing New Single, LP

Protomartyr is back with a new dispatch from the end times. The Detroit post-punk outfit will release its new album, Hotel Usona, on Sept. 25 via Domino, marking its first full-length since 2022. Alongside the announcement, the band has shared lead single “Sounds We Cannot Hear,” accompanied by a video starring comedian and actor Nate Varrone (Maddie’s Secret, The Bear).

Recorded with producer Dave Fridmann at his Tarbox Road Studios in western New York, Hotel Usona finds vocalist Joe Casey, drummer Alex Leonard, bassist Scott Davidson and multi-instrumentalist/co-producer Greg Ahee confronting what the band describes as the horrors of the present day. Casey imagines America as a crumbling hotel, with each of the album’s nine songs occupying a room haunted by its own uneasy guest.

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That concept comes into focus immediately on “Sounds We Cannot Hear,” as Casey turns his attention to the numbing effects of modern life, singing, “The scroll deforms the day,” before spiraling into a meditation on information overload, alienation and digital anxiety.

Musically, Hotel Usona expands Protomartyr’s already formidable palette. Ahee drew inspiration from Middle Eastern music and 1950s exotica, while Fridmann’s expansive production amplifies the tension, with additional horn contributions from the producer’s son, Jon.

The album also earned a characteristically colorful endorsement from fellow Detroit icon Iggy Pop, who praised its ambition and emotional heft. Calling the record “Wagnerian” in scope, Pop compared its reach to opera and marveled at the band’s ability to shift “rhythms and harmonics very, very smoothly.” He singled out Casey’s vocal performance and one particular lyric—“We got a bad review”—as a moment he wished he’d written himself.

“Musically, it sounds modal, and kind of chromatic, like I imagine Celtic war horns might sound in some forgotten battle,” Pop says of the album. “The singer, Joe Casey, is blessed with a beautiful voice that you want to listen to, but he stays perverse enough to keep things interesting when he wants to get petulant or a little bitchy.”

Following the album’s release, Protomartyr will embark on an extensive world tour across North America, the U.K. and Europe starting Oct. 19 in Phoenix. The run includes an Oct. 31 appearance supporting the Jesus and Mary Chain in Austin.

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