Im Interview – Protest The Hero über das neue Album

Frontstage: Okay, so what you like to introduce yourself? 

Rody: My name is Rody Walker. I sing for the band Protest The Hero, which is band from Canada. 

Frontstage: If the new record would be Maple syrup, how would you have it? 

Rody: I guess it would be like maybe a bourbon infused, smokey Maple syrup, but that’s just because I like drinking. 

Frontstage: I want you to describe Protest the Hero`s sound to someone who has never heard of you guys before. 

Rody: I would say that we are a complex fast melodic band with vocals that are not for everyone.

Frontstage: Fair fair, so the new record dropped on the 17th of July. How long did you write on it? 

Rody: How long did it take ro write? Uhhh, 6 years ButI mean, like, it wasn’t 6 years of steady writing. You know, outside of the band I’m also a Minor League Baseball coach. Okay, so it’s very important to me that the Rangers who have just finished their regular season undefeated, while I’m here- Just kiddin, life gets busy at home. You know, and it’s, we’re not all just f****** focused on the band I’d love to say that we are, but we’re not, so we all have businesses outside of this, we all have families, so sometimes things take a little longer than we’d hoped, and we hope the next one comes a little faster on the heels of this one, as opposed to 6 years. 

Frontstage: I mean, like, 6 years, there’s enough time to like go on tour of private lives but anyway, how did the sound change between the 2020 record and the new record? 

Rody: Can you do my favorite and pronounce the name of the 2020 record? 

Frontstage: No, there’s a reason I just set the 2020 record. I have no idea how do you pronounce it.

Rody: Palimpsest. So the difference is, I would say, we changed drummers, and one of the writers we had, who was just doing orchestral stuff, became one of the principal writers for the instrumental aspect of the music and he and I engineered the vocals in my house, and I think he made the biggest impact on the record. You know, he’s, I met him in a f****** Subway, not the restaurant., the train-

Frontstage: thanks for clarifying.

Rody: And like I met him years ago, and he was like, „Youre the guy from Protest the Hero“ and then all these years later, he is one of the principal writers on our record. And he’s done such a fantastic job, and he’s added spice to the record that did not exist before.

Frontstage: Thats so cool. Have you used any demos from 2020 that like didn’t make it onto the 2020 record. But now we’re like, oh they are sitting on the hard drive, let’s just use them for this one or did you start completely new?

Rody: We started completely new. There was one demo that we didn’t use for the record, which was quite unusual for us. Because usually it’s like holy f***, like we wrote these songs, they’re complicated, let’s use all of them, but there was one demo from 2020 that did not get used and we still didn’t use it. 

Frontstage: Will you ever use it? 

Rody: No, it’s not very good. 

Frontstage: Fair. Okay, it makes sense. How do you think the new songs changed the dynamic of the life set and did you say „Oh f****** finally“, when you kicked some of the songs of the set list, or was it a rather hard decision for you to make, because you really like everything that’s been on the set list. 

Rody: I don’t know it was like with every release the set gets longer and longer, and that’s a pain in my f****** a**, right, like there’s songs that we can’t move off the set list so we just like keep adding to it. It’s like I don’t like playing long sets, you know, like I don’t even like witnessing long sets. My favorite band on earth if they’re playing over an hour I’m kind of going „f***“ I can’t stand flat-footed for so long. So like the kind of thing at like hardcore shows where a band gets up with the Lights on and they play all their f****** songs. And it takes 15 minutes. That’s the kind of thing that I would like to do is just like 15 minutes set. You get what you get, we’re gonna play all the hits, but I know people don’t like that, but I am f****** old. And I don’t like playing long sets, it hurts my throat.

Frontstage: Is there any song on the set where sou go can we just please get rid of it? and everybody’s like, no, you can’t. 

Rody: Almost all of them if I could name one specifically right now. Probably a song called „bone marrow„. It’s just like every night it comes up and I’m like, oh cool, like a 7 minute song, f*** me. Like we play in blocks, like there’d be one songand then a block of 2, and then 3. And I hate all the 3 blocks. Man, I just want to do 2 songs, and stop to catch my breath, have a sip of water. 

Frontstage: Fair enough, what is the most rody lyric you’ve written on the new album from versus, what’s the least one where you went „I don’t know why I came up with this because he doesn’t necessarily have my personality to it, but I still like it.“ 

Rody: I don’t know it’s hard to say, because this record is like really me. But I think There is a lyric that says they were talking about Theseus’s ship in the f****** theory of that in the song, grandfather’s ax, and there’s a thing that I was talking about „just a fresh bit of lumber, perfect size to fill the gate“ and after I wrote it, I was like. That’s f****** yucky, so I put my brother-in-law on the booth and we recorded him just going what the f*** And I think that whole section is very me, being like gratuitous and a little yucky, and silly as f***, the least me, is anything that’s really poetic, like there’s a whole part that’s like, „we swim against the tide“, and all this f****** flowery b*******. I don’t like to listen to that. I don’t really like to compose it, but sometimes it feels necessary, despite the fact that it’s not very Me in nature. 

Frontstage: What do you listen to besides like when you’re not on tour? When you’re at home and how does it influence your writing style? 

Rody: So I listen to a lot of different stuff, I don’t like to listen to the genre that we participate in, but not because I don’t like it. I mean, honestly I don’t love it, but I don’t want it to have an influence over what I’m doing. Because I don’t want to sound like any of the other bands and that’s not a slide on them. I just dont want people to be able to compare us. I like a lot of like 80 straight edge hardcore, and I like this new emo wave that’s kind of happening with, like hot Mulligan, Carly Cosgrove, I can’t think of any others, but they’re great bands, wonder years kind of fall into that, but they sort of fit into the pop category as well. And I think they’re one of my very favorite bands. But yeah, I like things that are fast, I like things that are aggressive. I like things that are lyrically fairly straight to the point, and for anything outside of the stretch of point lyrics, I like to look to things like the 100 years and Carly Cosgrove and hot Mulligan

Frontstage: I have a rather fun question. Which song on the within album would lose a fight to goose and why? If they were physical things, if they were people.

Rody: All of them. Yeah, well, at least the orchard, the orchard I would say it’s weak? I love it, but it’s it’s a little coward. 

Frontstage: Out of all of the protests that you’re a songs which are would be the worst song as a first wedding dance, if they were instrumentals, or with vocals. 

Rody: Probably bloodmate, I mean, it’s like got that sort of like Dillinger escape plan chaoticness to the Start of it, which is like bad for dancing, and the lyrics are all about, like the conquests of Genghis Khan, so it’s like I don’t know any of the Fortress Stuff would be bad I think, and there’s our former basist and lyricist was a f****** incredible writer, but he did write in the style of music we were making, he did it on amazing job and it is very brutal in nature. 

Frontstage: I really like it. The orchid with an orchestra instrumental without your vocals, a great first wedding dance in my opinion. 

Rody: Thanks mate.

Frontstage: What’s your secret for not killing each other on tour? After like being a band for nearly 30 years? 

Rody: You gotta just rotate members all the time. We started in 1999 so we were only 12, but we were the original 5 members for a long, long time, and maybe the secret is like, take a f****** break here and there, you know, we hit the road consistently for a long time pretty much until the pandemic hit and then we´ve taken a pretty significant step back. And that’s been good for us, I think, but ultimately bad for our career. 

Frontstage: What’s your bucket list place that you might not have played yet, but you would love to tour or a place that you haven’t toured quite frequently but you fell in love with. 

Rody: We never played India. We got an offer to play India a long time ago but it fell through. And I know cottage country in Canda would be sick even though nobody would f******* be there, but I like the scene, the lakes, you know what I mean?

Frontstage: Oh my god. I gotta visit. But it’s whatever if each of the albums would be an IKEA product. What would the instructions warn people not to do? I mean, you have a lot of albums. Let’s just take the last 3, maybe. 

Rody: I don’t know, because the instructions are all the same, I don’t think that our records would fall apart quite as easily as IKEA furniture. If we’re making this analogy, IKEA furniture is maybe under engineered, and our records are over-engineered. I think one of the definite warning labels would be to Not put it near fire because I think they’re like quite explosive, because there’s so much happening. 

Frontstage: This sounds like a good way to end the interview. Thank you so much for sitting down with me. I will be seeing you later and I hope you enjoy the show.

Rody: Yeah of course. Thank you for having me.

Fotocredit: Lara Kramer