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Tuesday, May 13,2008
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Protestant: True Believers
It
is often taken for granted that hardcore punk is—and perhaps should be—the
domain of the young. Young adulthood is a scary time for most of us, and what
better way to express one’s youthful angst than by identifying with a music
scene that embraces those feelings of alienation and confusion?
I
don’t think I would have made it through adolescence with my sanity intact
without records like Black Flag’s Damaged
and Minor Threat’s Out of Step. Those
albums provided me with a useful outlet for my youthful rage and, perhaps more
importantly, made me realize that I wasn’t the only one feeling so, well, out
of step. At a time when one’s identity is incredibly unstable, any sense of
community becomes paramount, and hardcore punk became the one place where I
felt truly accepted.
By
the time I reached my mid-20s, I believed I had outgrown hardcore. I found
myself dismissing records that had once meant the world to me as simple,
one-dimensional, even juvenile. Along with many other kids that grew up within
the hardcore scene, I felt that this style of music did not really speak to the
complex realities of my life. I was caught up in going to the right schools,
finding a good job and falling in love. I was too busy to be angry all the
time, and perhaps too self-conscious to profess my love for a genre that, by
the late-1990s, seemed to offer the discriminating music listener only a
mindless glorification of a past that was long gone. In my mind, I had grown up
while hardcore punk had remained a perpetually angry, emotionally stunted
15-year-old. It was time to move on.
Yet
a funny thing happened after I turned 30. Faced with a new round of anxieties
and insecurities (broken marriages, fatherhood and career difficulties, to name
a few), I found myself reconnecting with a series of hardcore punk albums,
including the hate. the hollow., the
latest album by
When
asked why they continue to play hardcore, the band’s initial response is quite
punk. Guitarist Chris Ellis simply notes that “everything else is boring.”
However, when pressed a bit further to explain their commitment to
“It’s
pretty inclusive,” says vocalist/guitarist Cory von Bohlen, of the beauty of
hardcore. “You could listen to other types of music and not really be so involved.”
And
one gets the sense that this ability to become an active participant within the
world of hardcore punk has proven absolutely integral to the way in which the
members of Protestant have come to define themselves both as musicians and as
individuals.
“Music
is such a defining thing, and when you do it for so long and grow up being punk
rock, it just evolves with you,” explains bassist Jesse Smith.
And
there is a definite feeling of musical evolution within the hate. the hollow. While the record nods to such seminal,
straight-ahead hardcore acts as Negative Approach and Infest, it also embraces
the musical complexity that marked such mid- to late-’90s acts as Rorschach,
His Hero is Gone, Tragedy and From Ashes Rise. At the same time, a number of songs
on the album approach the very un-hardcore length of five minutes, and—through
experimentation with volume, song structure and tone—move away from the
“shorter, faster, louder” formula that often defines hardcore. There is an epic
quality to such tracks, as these songs embrace an aesthetic that is more
overwhelming than cathartic, more stifling than explosive.
The
lyrics for the nine tracks that make up the
hate. the hollow. also help create the claustrophobic atmosphere present on
the album, as both the band’s music and words bear down heavily upon the
listener. This is an incredibly bleak album, one concerned with, as expressed
in the title track, “the distance left between and behind.”
Perhaps
because all of the members of Protestant are well past adolescence, the
feelings of anger, disillusionment and loss expressed on the album feel
incredibly earned, and incredibly real. By the time von Bohlen, on the album’s
final track, “Asleep,” screams, “Time needs to get out of the way/ Time needs
to break,” Protestant has made it clear that hardcore can effectively address
the perils of growing older. Like many of its followers, punk rock may not age
gracefully. But, at least in the hands of true believers such as Protestant, it
will continue to remain relevant.
Information on Protestant’s new
album can be found at myspace.com/protestantmilwaukee.
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