It should come as no surprise to any long time visitor of the site that I am a huge Protomen fan. What’s not to love? They have an epic, full sounding rock-opera sound reminiscent of Queen or Meatloaf with occasional chip-tune undercurrents and the bulk of their material is part of a narrative that is set in the world of MegaMan. It’s almost as if they have too much going for them. They pull it off though.
I have two t-shirts from bands that I like. One is a Mastadon shirt and the other is from Protomen. That’s how much I’m into these guys: I am willing to transform my chest area into an (admittedly obscure) advertisement for them.
So, when I found out last year at 2012 PAX East (hey, we should go to PAX again sometime) that they were releasing a Queen tribute album I was pretty jazzed. There are nine (!) members of The Protomen, between the nine they multitask and all told they end up with this: 2 male vocalists (with wildly different but equally impressive vocal ranges), 1 female vocalist, a drummer, 3 synth players, 3 guitarists, a pianist, a sledgehammer player (seriously), a gong smasher and a bass player. If there was a band that could do justice to Queen, these are the guys (and gal).
The album is actually a professionally mastered version of a live performance they did way back in December 2010. I guess production on the thing was a bitch because it wasn’t released until summer 2012. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
