Protomartyr have never done things the easy way. From singer Joe Casey’s handmade album artwork to drummer Alex Leonard’s impish, kinetic inversions of classic post-punk rhythm, the Detroit band maintain a workman-like lack of compromise in everything they do. Cerebral, instinctive or otherwise, nothing in the Protomartyr canon is ill-considered or under-distilled. For many listeners, myself included, this sense of commitment and purpose made them instantly appealing on first exposure, yet it’d be easy to understand a certain reticence from others based on that same quality. This is austere, unflinching music, often as bleak to one person as it may be cathartic to another—and this has never been truer than on Protomartyr’s new album Hotel Usona.

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