I remember waking up at 9am on August 30th, 2005 to go over to HMV to pick up this CD. I walked over there, picked it up and then ran home out of excitement to listen to it. As lame as it sounds, that’s actually true. I guess you can already tell this review will be slightly biased because I love these guys, but what can you do? So I get home, and I pop
Kezia into my computer. A few seconds later I hear the distant scream saying, “This should never be”. The opening riff of “No Stars Over Bethlehem” instantly blows me away, and to this day it’s still one of my favourite riffs on the album. I can’t believe I actually thought they wouldn’t be able to top
A Calculated Use of Sound. As much as I love that album, this blows it out of the water. I feel like a fool because I completely underestimated them, but I wasn’t exactly expecting a change in style. It was a change for the better though. I can honestly say now though, that I’m going to be very surprised if they some how manage to top this album, though I do not doubt them. I’ve said it in my
A Calculated Use of Sound review that I have a lot of respect for these guys and
Kezia raised my amount of respect for them by a lot. You can tell that this album is more metal influenced, but there are some similarities to their previous work, just not many. If you’re a long time fan, you’re probably able to tell that they haven’t forgotten about their punk roots (see the first verse in “Turn Soonest To The Sea”, musically, not necessarily vocally). I knew this album would be successful and I was right, because a few months after their first release, they signed to Vagrant, toured America and a bit of the UK and played on the Warped Tour. They’ve accomplished a lot at such a young age and deserve it. I’m dragging on now, so I’ll move onto the album.
Protest the Hero doesn’t refer to
Kezia as a concept album, but it does have a story behind it. It is a story of an execution of a woman named Kezia. They leave you with three characters that each share their own perspectives of Kezia’s death. The characters are the prison priest, the prison guard and Kezia herself. Ending off with the last song, “A Plateful of Our Dead”, which reflects the members’ personal opinions. The lyrics (like A Calculated Use of Sound, written by Arif Mirabdolbaghi) have shifted from political/social issues and are more metaphorical. Overall, they’re very well written and you can see the meaning behind them if you look deep enough.
Moving onto vocals. Rody has really stepped it up from
A Calculated Use of Sound. His voice has gotten a lot better since then and his range is even higher now. I was very impressed by his singing ability on this CD. His screaming has gotten better as well as it doesn’t sound as screechy like on the last CD. You can really tell they spent a lot of time working on and perfecting all the vocals and vocal harmonies. All the vocal harmonies are great and it has tons of screams, chants and even some low growl’s from Arif. The eighth track, “Turn Soonest to the Sea”, also has a choir-like chant to end it off, which really stands out on this album because I’ve never heard any other band do something like that before.
The guitars are a lot heavier this time around. Tim Millar and Luke Hoskin showed that they had the ability to make technical and original riffs on
A Calculated Use of Sound, but I wasn’t expecting them to make riffs this heavy and even oddly timed as well. Being a guitar player myself, I can really appreciate these riffs and how they’ve put them together. Although to some people it may seem like just a collection of a bunch of cool riffs, I feel they flow nicely together. Despite most songs being in the same key, the diversity keeps the songs alive and sounding different from one another. Two aspects I really like about this album are the time signatures and sweeping. I know this has been bashed by fans of heavier music, since Protest the Hero has taken on the more metal approach now, but it’s not really fair to compare them to bands like Between the Buried and Me because it’s not exactly the same genre.
Now onto the bass and drums. You can tell by listening to
A Calculated Use of Sound then listening to
Kezia that Arif has gotten a lot better than he already was on bass. He keeps up with Luke and Tim and has his own share of awesome bass lines on the album. Moe Carlson (drums), like the rest of the band, also stepped it up on this album. I love the way his drums, especially his bass drum sounds. It sort of has the machine gun style going on, but not overboard. He is never a second off time on the album and I really dig the way the drums follows the guitar patterns.
As you can probably tell, I really love this album. By far my favourite and most anticipated of 2005. I really like everything about this album. The technical riffs, harmonies (guitar and vocal), sweeping, bass tapping, appropriately using double kicker, the use of screaming and low growls. I’m glad for Protest the Hero for coming as far as they have, because I saw the potential in them since
A Calculated Use of Sound. Even though their mainstream success sometimes angers me (more specifically some of the fans they've gained because of their mainstream success), I know that they deserve it. And if you ever get the chance to see this band live, do it. I swear you won’t regret it.
Recommended Tracks
No Stars Over Bethlehem
She Who Mars The Skin Of Gods
Turn Soonest To The Sea
Official Site: http://protestthehero.com
Myspace: http://myspace.com/protestthehero
Record Labels: http://undergroundoperations.com
http://vagrant.com
