Protest the Hero release first album in 6 years (listen)

Ontario proggy post-hardcore vets Protest The Hero are back with their first album in six years, Palimpsest, which was self-released in North America and out in the rest of the world via Spinefarm. The album was originally due out Friday (6/19), but the band put it out early due to Juneteenth, writing, “We didn’t feel right about celebrating our album when we should be observing the holiday. Recently we have been doing our best to look inward and acknowledge our prejudice and privilege. In doing so, we must recognize the importance of Juneteenth, and we don’t want to detract from it in any way.” The band is also promoting ways to support the Black Lives Matter movement along with the album’s release.

Protest The Hero, who have long been a political band, wrote this record about early 1900s America and the ways in which Americans rewrite their own history to omit the oppression of Black and indigenous people that the country was built upon. (It was of course written before the recent protests, but these topics have been relevant for a long time; they’re just more mainstream now.) They told Loudwire that they started writing the album three years ago, inspired by the bigotry that Trump’s presidency enabled, and when the topic of “losing fans” due to being political came up, they said, “If we got a bunch of [the] super right-wing, alternative conservative element that are listening to our band thinking everything’s hunky dory, it’s not hunky dory. I don’t want those people listening to our music anyways. They can kick rocks as far as I’m concerned. Fuck ’em.”

The album is out now on various streaming services, including Bandcamp, who will be giving their cut of sales to the NAACP on Juneteenth.