Protomartyr are a celebrated act in the realm of post-punk, but their latest record is turning heads even outside the genre’s fanbase: in a world that only seems to grow more desperate and terrifying with each news story, an album that dissects and rejects modern warfare and politics is quite the hot ticket item. Casey and company have a way of cutting through the noise, even when the music itself is loud— that’s what makes ‘Hotel Usona’ such a masterpiece.

You can hardly begin to wade into the project without confronting the venom that runs through its veins: there’s no separating the record’s themes from its music, not when both are out to leave you breathless. The titular ‘Hotel Usona’ is a thinly veiled allegory for the United States of America, a fact made abundantly clear by the bald eagle on the cover, and opener ‘The Old Hotel’ makes Joe Casey’s perspective quite clear. Protomartyr walk a very thin line between fantasy and reality, aiming barbed jabs at a world they are outwardly disgusted with— somehow, these songs manage to stab you right in the heart while still leaving room to be endlessly mulled over.

“Welcome back to the dream of a rotten mind

The rooms are half empty, the hallways are where you'll survive

The boys in the hotel are slovenly drunk on the job

Their promise of gentle discernment expired”

The metaphorical hotel is a useful tool for the group— it certainly provides Casey an effective avenue to express his disillusionment on ‘Checking Out’— but it isn’t one they’re beholden to. Whether you’re hearing ‘Exalted Eagles’ stick to the concept to comment on everyday complicity or having the IDF’s horrific tactics forced down your throat on ‘Lavender — Gospel,’ the album is sewn together with outright emotion and urgency. The verses of ‘The Knife Dream’ are delivered with so much passion you can practically hear Joe Casey spitting in the studio, leaving you to do nothing but confront the dystopian tales set before you. Let it not be said that ‘Hotel Usona’ is some empty piece of punk rock wheel-spinning: Protomartyr are out for blood with this one.

“It's waiting in the walls with manacle and chain

Whistle and it will come with the bread of dependency

The guilty try to forget but it is electric in their blood

Let this sickness remain the record of what they've done”

The reason you cannot (and certainly should not) separate the band’s gripping post-punk from their politics is because the two are driving at the same ideas: just as the lyrics on single ‘Sounds We Cannot Hear’ are suffocating, its dense arrangements are as overwhelming as they are thrilling. Brass is a recurring theme across the project, no doubt aiming to mimic the surface-level grandeur of the United States— it’s the track’s opulent presentation that makes ‘Exalted Eagles’ so inarguably gigantic, and the James Bond-esque strings that score ‘Feed the Sewer’ are no less effective in controlling the narrative. Protomartyr do exhibit the restraint you’d expect of a post-punk outfit, but the intensity of their performances is apparent all the same. The winding verses of ‘The Old Hotel’ and ‘The Knife Dream’ are as much a display of impressive musicianship as they are an exercise in dread.

‘Hotel Usona’ is quite content you let you sit in contemplation, allowing its songs to twist and turn wherever they please: if there’s room to nitpick the project, it’s in Protomartyr’s inconsistent relationship with the very tension that usually keeps you glued to your seat. Both the distant soundscapes of ‘Converts’ and the vintage tones of ‘Third Country’ are intriguing avenues for the album to go down, but neither one is able to match the sheer scale of their peers, which run circles around most other bands attempts to ‘go big or go home.’ By its end, ‘Checking Out’ doesn’t come to much of a conclusion, but that is precisely the point. ‘Hotel Usona’ holds up the problems of the world for all to see, and practically begs you to do something about it— what lingers after its gone is a desire to see the planet put to rights.

Protomartyr have done the impossible here by telling you what you already know without becoming redundant: no matter how immersed you are in the day’s news cycle, ‘Hotel Usona’ is still an ice-cold wake up call. The record is a masterful post-punk experience, certainly, but that’s not the takeaway you’ll leave these nine tracks with. It’ll be those blaring horns and Casey’s lyrical refrains that you won’t be able to get out of your head.