Review Summary: Don’t mistake my passivity for indifference.
Detroit is not the nicest place in the world. It is drowning in poverty and is hitting economical lows like no other place in the U.S. of A. ever did. A place as stagnant as that is bound to spawn out a horde of critical musicians. And exactly in that discomfort were Protomartyr bred and raised. Their music encapsulates the city’s decay, the people’s frustration and the political dismay. But the nihilistic nature of their home gave them the greatest defence gift of them all, the apathy and cynical irony. Relatives in Descent is a harrowing Post-Punk to the bone It's passive aggressive, musically robust and brute, but still actively trying to mask its own torment and emotional trauma.
The album opens with A Private Understanding, which could easily be called one of the genre’s best offerings in the revivalism era. It’s a track that assembles all the tricks and tropes that helped shape the genre and transforms them into one ultimate beast of a song. It grows from a tad chaotic brooding instrumental intro, then a biting refrain with vocals displaying hidden chagrin, to an outro that on a basis of musical repetition and gradually distorting production drags you into the abyss of contrasting despair with cataclysmic beauty.
And the album is full of cleverly constructed moments like this, ones that combine melodic beauty and violent expressions. Songs like The Chuckler or Night-Blooming Cereus manage to engulf with an utmost sophisticated and mature approach to sorrow. Then again, the album also contains a good chunk of near-cynically irony-ridden moments such as Here Is the Thing, My Children or Male Plague. Sometimes the two tempo shifts occur amidst one song, like in Up the Tower. But in spite of these stylistic and atmospheric contrasts, the album sounds perfectly cohesive and organised. Everything falls into its place ideally.
Every stylistic turn and tempo change directly mirrors the album’s apparent concept. It seems that it reflects upon an individual torn in frustration and tired state of mind, ruminating on his personal life, as well as the distress surrounding him. He navigates this life in resentment and purposefully masked emotions, as if he wants to avoid admitting the fact that he cares about the world around him. He thinks about all that is happening around him, bitingly commenting on it, remembering personal encounters and experiences, hidden in apathy. And every time he realises his own torment, he flushes it down with a portion of irony and cocky crankiness, just so he could dwell in his comfort zone of passive, but aggrieved bystander. And all of this is presented to us in an array of stunningly poetic, mature and sharp lyrics.
Relatives in Descent is not a friendly album. As a matter of fact it is one of the most haunting records this year. Protomartyr managed to free themselves from the clutches of the formulaic sound with way too obvious influences that often plagued their music before and departed from the hollow earthly simplicity with an impressive new instalment in their gradually more and more staggering discography. They came through with a lyrical behemoth and an instrumental leviathan that not only provides a fresh take on tricks and tropes of Post-Punk, but also pays a lot of homage to the genre’s traditions. It is without a doubt one of the utmost well-constructed albums this year and one of the easily most important Post-Punk revivalism projects ever.
