Protest The Hero

07.05.2008 | Cam | 1 Comments

If you’re foolish enough to scoff at the notion that power metal styled vocals and complex song arrangements aren’t relevant in 2008, then you clearly haven’t heard Protest The Hero.

PTH mouth piece Rody Walker called up for a chat…

Interview w/ Rody Walker (Vocals) of Protest The Hero (US)

By Cameron Chambers

Hey Rody, how are you today?

Good man, how are you?

Things are good man. You guys are in the midst of a pretty eclectic tour with Silverstein, A Day To Remember and The Devil Wears Prada. How have the shows been?

Actually… to tell you the truth… we just flew home and dropped off the tour.

Do you mind if I ask why?

We’ve just become a very disorganized touring band and we were having some problems internally with our team. So we flew home, fire a couple of people and now we’re getting our shit together for our next tour, ha ha.

Well, that question backfired, ha ha.

It’s all good man, ha ha.

Vagrant Records doesn’t really have a history of working with bands as heavy as Protest The Hero, how did your deal with them come about?

I don’t know really. We were shopping our first record in the States… it’d already been out in Canada for a year and I think… there’s one this one guy at Vagrant who’s a giant metal fan and even though we knew they didn’t have any metal bands we were into it.

I consider him solely responsible, ha ha. He was very interested and they were really nice people so we were like “whatever, let’s just ink our names here”, ha ha. 

Vagrant have something of an in built audience who expect a certain kind of band or release from the label, was that ever a concern of yours or the rest of your band members?

Not really, no. We’ve never really concerned ourselves too much with paradigms. We just do what we do and if we piss people off then fuck em. Hell, even if they like it fuck em anyway, ha ha. We love to piss people off!

Do you think things may have turned out differently if Protest The Hero had signed to a label with a bigger reputation for releasing metal, or do you prefer standing out from the rest of the Vagrant roster?

I dunno. We might be touring with different bands but beyond that I don’t think there’d be much of a difference. For an indie label they’re getting our record out there as much as any other label so I don’t think the difference would be too vast… if anything at all.

Turning back the clock a bit, what were the biggest differences between writing your debut record and Fortress (sophomore album)?

Well, as opposed to writing the debut in my parent’s basement we did Fortress in a rehearsal space. It was a lot quicker too. We wrote our debut in high school, so we were in school five days a week, then we’d get home and write until 10pm… then we did our homework and went to bed, ha ha.

With Fortress it was more like a nine to five job instead of a twelve to seven album, ha ha. The biggest difference was also the alcohol consumption. We definitely drank a bit while writing and recording… actually, I’d say we drank profusely while we made Fortress, ha ha.

It’s been said that a band has their whole life to write their first record and then they’re working against the clock on their second. Did you feel pressured at all when putting Fortress together?

Not really to tell you the truth. We pushed the deadline back a bunch of time too. We weren’t actually supposed to be writing at the time we were because the label wanted us on the road… but we had some drug allegations going on at the time so we thought we’d start writing instead of touring, ha ha.

I read a quote of yours that caught my attention: “I am of the belief a lot of the people who work for us were hoping for a stab at a more commercially viable album, however we wrote what we wanted without linear boundaries and created something less commercial than ever”. Do you feel you wrote the record you guys wanted to without compromising with your management or label?

Absolutely! Some of those people that wanted that commercial viable record are no longer existing within our framework, which is why we’re home now. We wrote the record we wanted to write and the other people who were working in the team that didn’t understand that… well, we’ve fucked em off!

Fans and critics have nothing but nice things to say about Fortress, has that appeased the powers that be?

There are still people that doubted us while we wrote what we were writing but they don’t have much to say these days. The record has been received quite well so that made them shut their gullet holes, ha ha!

What have people been saying about it in Australia… actually, has it even been released down there?

It sure has.

That’s sweet! That’s the best feeling, when we get messages from kids on MySpace who are in Australia… we’re just like “that’s sweet”!

Taking into account how complex Fortress is, what kind of time frame did you have to work with in regards to writing and recording?

We had about seven months I think, two of which were spent in the studio. The rest was spent during winter in our practice space in Toronto… freezing our asses off and smoking bud and drinking, ha ha.

Your debut Kezia had one central theme that the album’s lyrics focused on whereas Fortress has taken a different approach. Was it the case where there wasn’t one central theme that you felt deserved an entire record’s worth of attention or were you simply looking to try something new?

With the debut we wrote it thematically and it followed one central theme. We ended up getting a lot of people at shows that were really obsessed with the concept and it seemed to overshadow the actual music at times.

With Fortress we made an effort to make it less of a stringent concept and hopefully the concept won’t overshadow the music. So far, it seems to be working well. 

How did you get Vadim Pruzhanov from Dragonforce to guest on the record?

Ha ha. We toured with them last year and we’ve always been big fans of Dragonforce and gratuitous wankery… as you can tell, ha ha.

We toured and became good friends and when the record came around we had this part where there wasn’t anything going on… there was just this chug part and we’re not a chug band, so we called Vadim and said “do you want to shred something over this part so it’s not boring”?

We sent him a clip and within half an hour he sent us back a shredding solo!

I was going to ask if he tracked his keyboard parts with you guys. It would’ve been great to see him nail that shit up close.

It would’ve been awesome! Unfortunately he tracked it at home and sent it through in midi format. Hopefully we’ll get to tour with them again soon and he can play that song with us live… hopefully he can use a keytar, ha ha!

Once you guys wrap up this current tour, you’re heading straight out with Chiodos and then hitting Japan with Bullet For My Valentine. What’s the likelihood of an Australia tour in the near future?

It’s highly likely! We’re trying to organize something right now so we can come over right after Japan. We’re not too sure who it would be with though.

We’re looking to play small clubs with local bands. I think that would be the most ideal thing for us and to introduce ourselves to Australia.

That’s all we’ve got time for Rody, is there anything else you want to say?

Uh… I think I’m good. Was nice talking to you though!