Detroit post-punk outfit Protomartyr release their sophomore album Under Color of Official Right, the follow up to 2013′s No Passion All Technique on April 8 via Hardly Art.
Protomartyr’s taut, austere rock was incubated in a freezing Detroit warehouse littered with beer cans and cigarette butts and warmed, feebly, by space heaters. Despite the cold, Protomartyr emerged with a sound that is idiosyncratic but relatable, hooky but off-kilter, and economical in a way that elicits comparisons to possible antecedents like Pere Ubu or The Fall as well as local contemporaries like Frustrations or Tyvek (whose frontman Kevin Boyer played bass in an early iteration of Protomartyr) — all of which have combined here to make one stunner of a sophomore album and the band’s first for Hardly Art.
Recorded in a single weekend with Bill Skibbe and Jessica Ruffins (Wolf Eyes, Cass McCombs, Lower Dens, Six Organs of Admittance) at Keyclub Recording Studio in Benton Harbor, MI, the album straddles studio professionalism and punk impulse.
