It's 2 p.m., and Protest the Hero singer Rody Walker is still lying on the floor of his Toronto apartment, fighting off a hangover. Last night, he and a friend split 40 ounces of whiskey then went out for dollar shots, and today his liver is paying the price.
Rody's alcohol binge wasn't in celebration of his band's new record, Fortress, which comes out tomorrow (January 29). It was just part of his regular routine of fighting off the boredom that comes with being a liberal, young hyperactive adult in a predictable, conservative world. Protest the Hero's zany progressive thrash metal is Walker's other outlet for amusement -- which explains the music schizophrenic clash of speed, abrupt rhythm changes, dissonance, melody and emotion.
"We all just get bored really easily so we’re always trying to do something that will keep our interest," Walker told MTVnews.com's Metal File. “When we write a record, we want something that will still keep our attention a couple years down the line, but it never works."
In other words, 30 minutes after Protest the Hero finish recording a new batch of songs, they're pretty much sick of 'em. And that's a problem for a band that has to promote its albums with lengthy tours.
"Right now, I don’t ever want to play those songs on [our last album] Kezia again," said Walker. "And I know we’re going to have to when we tour, which sucks. We hate being labeled, but if we have to be called something, I think ADD metal applies."
Protest the Hero entered the studio with producer Julius "Juice" Butty in mid-June and spent about a month layering dozens of tracks for Fortress. Then, Butty worked closely with Walker on the vocals. If it sometimes sounds on the record as if the singer is about to fall down, chances are, he was – just not always from nervous exhaustion.
"I got drunk every day, which was fun," Walker said. "To start off, I’d take shots of whiskey or scotch to clear my throat. And then, basically, I just continued doing it until I couldn’t stand in the booth or I was too drunk to continue."
In the studio, Walker sang his own melodies, but bassist Arif Marabdolbaghi wrote the lyrics. When Protest the Hero first got together in 1999, Walker wrote his own s--t, but then Marabdolbaghi brought some lyrics into a jam session and floored everyone with his poetic style. "Arif is just so talented," Walker explained. "He’s a literature master. When he was 17, he went to a [Fyodor] Dostoevsky symposium in Switzerland and was the youngest person to ever be invited to one of those. It’s kind of funny. This time, [guitarist] Luke [Hoskin] and I were like, 'Hey, man, can you write a party song about how we want to drink beers and f--k bit--es?' And Arif came up with this really complex lyric for 'The Dissentience’'about smoking weed that was all metaphorical. That was his idea of a party lyric."
Of course, Fortress isn't a party album, it's a concept record loosely divided into two parts: "On Conquest and Capture" and "Isosceles." And, though there's not any real storyline, the lyrics address numerous cerebral themes.
"Its really a look at past, present and future through the battles that have been fought and are being fought and supposedly will be fought," Walker said. "It goes through Genghis Khan and Flidais, which is from Irish Mythology. A lot of the themes are centered around goddess worship because these days people seem to only want to be worshiping Allah and Jesus Christ and all these strange male figures. And in the past we used to very much worship female figures. So it’s very much about bringing back the femininity to God."
But just because the dudes in Protest the Hero are smart doesn't mean they don't all know how to party. "Dude, I'm basically just a functioning alcoholic," Walker says. "I spend all my time wasted and rarely know the day or time. And our rhythm section -- those guys are usually blazed out of their trees on weed. Basically, I think we're just a really complicated party band. Only our drummer [Moe Carlson] doesn't drink. He throws up after two beers."
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