PROTOMARTYR’S MUSIC is a slow burn, the musical equivalent of paint peeling off walls and vines overtaking manmade structures.
Fittingly, the noise-rock band formed in Detroit, a city mythologized for its golden age and subsequent decay. Protomartyr came together in 2008 after the death of frontman Joe Casey’s father, as his mother’s Alzheimer’s began to worsen. “I just talk about death and decay through things I know,” says Casey. “I grew up Irish Catholic, so a lot of religious imagery ends up in there.”
As a musician, Casey isn’t impervious to the influence of his Irish Catholic upbringing—Protomartyr is named after Saint Stephen, a biblical figure who was supposedly Christianity’s first martyr.
“One good thing about the Catholic Church is that they don’t really shy away from talking about death,” Casey says. “The church that I lived next door to had a stained glass window with Saint Timothy shot full of arrows and, you know… people getting burnt at the stake, things like that. Our high school library was dedicated to the North American Jesuit Martyrs, so there were all these stained glass pictures of Indians murdering Jesuits. That kind of thing was just permeating.”