Cascadia Calling 2025.10.6
"someone has written on the stone / in some angry hand / 'hope rides alone'"
Not quite two years ago, I was walking late at night in the weird bit of Eastlake that they can’t figure out what to do with because there’s a highway in the way. They used to have a cluster of good bars and rock venues there, but the only one left is El Corazon. I don’t remember why I was walking down that particular stretch of road, but I was engaging in the terrible habit of Being on My Phone while walking. It’s a bad habit because Being on My Phone is, itself, bad for me. Plus when I’m walking, it makes me even more prone to tripping.
It was fortunate that night, though, because I got an email about the Protomen having a 20th anniversary show around the time of my upcoming 40th birthday. I impulse purchased tickets. The show was in Nashville. I live approximately 2,500 miles from Nashville.
That’s the entire story of how I ended up spending my 40th birthday in Nashville. It was an amazing trip. Brigid and I had a great time. I managed to lose my backpack and, by the most insane stroke of luck in my life, get it back again. We ended up getting stuck due to a train and playing bingo with the owners of a whiskey distillery. I won a gaudy, iridescent hip flask that I still treasure, but have never drank out of.
And, of course, I dragged her to the 20th anniversary show of a band that has released two albums of an extended rock opera based loosely on the Mega Man video game franchise.
To answer the obvious question: yes, she has forgiven me. Mostly.
If you’re going to make a series of themed nerdrock albums as part of a multi-decade-in-the-making rock opera, you need to commit to the bit. When making the record, you have to channel your inner Bowie, go balls-to-the-wall and sell it hard and straight. Wink or cringe even a little bit on tape and you’ll ruin it. The Protomen clearly understand that. Their gritty, shredding, distorted first album is great, if messy, rock-and-roll. The plot they built out of the scattered bones of the Mega Man mythos is effecting and full of rage and pathos.
In making their own rock opera, the Protomen learned from the best. They adopt many of the stylistic and production queues of 70s and 80s synth rock and metal, which is the temporal and aesthetic peak of the rock opera. A look at the artists they paid homage to on their cover album The Cover Up gives a good roster: Styx, Queen, Iron Maiden, Kenny Loggins. All artists who would completely understand the musical impetus behind the Protomen’s music, even if they did have to ask “What’s a Mega Man?”.
They also adopt that most 80s affectation of stage names. Raul Panther III, The Gambler, Reanimator, K.I.L.R.O.Y, and a cast of other, more plausible names adorn the liner notes.
The Protomen are killer live. I think the 20th anniversary show was the fifth or sixth time I’d seen them. They commit to their personas with elaborate stage makeups, electro-mechanical prompts, and stage antics and critical plot points in the narrative.
The golden era of the band’s live shows, in my opinion, was the early 2010s. At the time, Turbo Lover was playing the part of the villainous Wiley. He not only did a thundering-yet-smirking rendition of “The Hounds”, he also oozed across the stage exuding the kind of oily villany that charms the audience without at all trying to redeem the character. The interplay between him and frontman Raul Panther III was gripping.
Act II: The Father of Death is where the band really hit their stride. The production, musicianship, and dramatic sensibility were all vastly improved and the story began to take on the scope and force of a larger epic. They would go on to expand the mythos with a short film and the aforementioned covers album, itself supposedly the soundtrack to a movie that exists in the world of the rock opera. (The lore can get a little messy at times.)
One thing they didn’t do was make any definite announcement about the long-promised Act III. From the release of Act II in September of 2009, they were consistently coy about the progress on Act III, even going so far as to declare that every time anyone asked about it, they intentionally delayed working on it.
A few days ago, the Protomen finally announced the release of Act III: This City Made Us. It’ll be out early next year and they released a couple of singles, and promised more to come each week between now and the official release.
From what they’ve released so far, it seems like they’ve leaned in hard to the anthemic, synthy rock feel of Act II. The wailing, galloping vocal lines of “Hold Back the Night” give me hope that we’re in for an epic conclusion to a two-decade journey. Its moody, pensive, chanted bridge makes me think that the sixteen year wait from the last album was worth it.
And while the band hasn’t announced any tour dates in support of the album, as soon as they do, I’ll be buying tickets. Hopefully somewhere slightly closer than Nashville.