This October marks the release of Protomartyr’s third and finest work to date, The Agent Intellect. Named after an ancient philosophical questioning of how the mind operates in relation to the self, it’s an elegant and often devastating display of all that makes Protomartyr—composed of singer Joe Casey, guitarist Greg Ahee, drummer Alex Leonard, and bassist Scott Davidson—so vital and singularly visceral an outfit.
Over the course of several months, Ahee waded through more than a hundred song fragments until he reached the bottomless melodies of "I Forgive You" and "Clandestine Time", the inky depths of "Pontiac 87" and titanic churn of "Why Does It Shake?" Lyrically, Casey is at his most confident and haunting. He humanizes evil on "The Devil in His Youth," and, amid the charred pop of "Dope Cloud," he reassures us that nothing—not God, not money—can or will prevent our minds from unraveling until we finally fade away. We are no one and nothing, he claims, without our thoughts. It’s a theme that echoes through the entirety of the record, but never as beautifully as it does on "Ellen." Named after his mother and written from the perspective of his late father, it’s as romantic a song as you’re likely to hear this or any year, Casey promising to wait for her on the other side, with the memories she’s lost safely in hand.
Protomartyr’s third record in three years (following 2013’s No Passion All Technique & 2014’s Under Color of Official Right), the Detroit four-piece is operating with a clear sense of urgency and focus. Today, they share the first single off The Agent Intellect, "Why Does It Shake?" Casey says of the song title, "It’s a back-handed ode to humanity’s resilient self regard in the face of inevitable oblivion. Then the trap door opens." The Agent Intellect is out 10/9 on Hardly Art.
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