by LE Francis
Well, this sure as hell wasn’t my first rodeo.
The first time I saw Protest the Hero was during DragonForce’s 2006 U.S. tour. I wasn’t even old enough to drink (nor was anyone in the band I believe) & now we’re all pushing forty & in the in-between they’ve been my constant favorites, my comfort band. & everyone around me has always been aware of it because I won’t shut the fuck up about them.
& this Oct. 23, 2023 show was far from my first time at El Corazon. Which has quickly become my least favorite venue in the pacific northwest. While I hope we are past the years of the first stall in the ladies’ being piled with a giant pile of fossilized shit, the main room is still laid out terribly & sold out is OVERSOLD. It’s easy to get pushed to the edge of the crowd past a wall that shouldn’t be there & blocks the stage. & if you have to pee & are deep in a sold out room, they apparently think you should just piss yourself since they don’t give a fuck about fire code or ADA & don’t have staff clearing a marked path through the crowd. This show was easily the worst I’ve seen it. The crowd was so massive it blocked the merch area & you couldn’t even mill your way through the lines.
Additionally, they used to have TVs in the second bar (which becomes a separate venue, The Funhouse, for smaller shows) that showed the footage from the stage – no more.
Not to mention it is probably the least accessible of the downtown venues. It used to be called “The Off Ramp” because it’s located right under an I-5 offramp that can be dicey as fuck to pass through, especially if you’re a woman on your own. The place has an atmosphere & it is not a chill one. I have to imagine the Starset nerds on Reddit calling Showbox Sodo dirty for a single cup on the sidewalk have never had to dance through the minefield of dookie in front of El Corazon. & parking in the general area is a clusterfuck & I inevitably end up parking at a distance & regretting it greatly during the walk in.
To be fair, it wasn’t always that way & I’ve seen Protest at this venue several times & in the old days I would breeze out of there drunk off my ass, meandering through the streets with no problem. Things have changed & it sucks. That said, I honestly don’t think that we’re going to solve the issues in Seattle or any other major city by further militarizing an already violent police force (the Seattle police are notoriously violent & racist to boot) or throwing people into the overcrowded, for-profit penal system. & nobody is willing to have an honest conversation about human suffering & the roots of crime & homelessness — even the libs in this state have a particular whiny-ass, NIMBY venom for poor people. But this isn’t a political column & if anyone bothers reading, it’s not for my sociopolitical philosophies, so…
Anyway, if it hadn’t been for Protest the Hero I wouldn’t have been there. & if it wasn’t for The Number 12 Looks Like You, I wouldn’t be holding my nose to go next week (at the time of writing this). I’ve passed on several shows I would have otherwise gone to because they were at El Corazon & I didn’t feel like dealing with it. You’ve gotta be in my top 10 for me to deal with El Corazon & if you know me at all, you already know that Protest is easily number 1.
The Callous Daoboys
Let me be perfectly honest, the sound from where I was standing in the room was absolute muddy shit & I couldn’t really see or hear anything clearly. So all I’ll say is have your drinks before & don’t bother with the bar next to the stage if you care about hearing the band. I did stand on a bench a few times to get a glimpse but overall I couldn’t see much & I’m average height (5’8). There’s definitely no grade to the floor, nor is there anywhere raised in the room aside from the merch area in the back.
This isn’t the band’s fault though & if you’re a fan of the chaos & musicianship of Protest the Hero, you should definitely check out The Callous Daoboys’ music. They lean a little harder into the chaotic side of the sound & graze lightly over the hook laden melodic sensibility of Protest, reminding me more of the aforementioned Number 12. Listening through their 2022 release, “Celebrity Therapist,” though there’s almost something of the more disjointed, emotionally thorny early Stolas or A Lot Like Birds vibe to them – especially in the more spoken-word segments of song.
Ultimately, I really enjoy their studio releases & I hope I can catch them again in a better setting.
Moontooth
There was so much confusion around Moontooth & it was very second-hand for me because I’d had to pee at the end of the Daoboys’ set & after a very claustrophobic push through the crowd to the restrooms I’d decided to step into the second bar (The Funhouse) where there was a bit of open floor. But this is also when I found out that you can no longer see or hear the show there.
Even though I heard the first song start, I hung back to finish my drink. & before I finished, people were surging back into the bar & I was getting a text from a friend in the main room asking “did you see what happened from where you are?”
I didn’t. I couldn’t see anything. But apparently one of the guys in the band had a seizure on stage.
The unbelievable thing was about fifteen minutes later the whole band returned to stage & played the rest of their set. I couldn’t see anything because I was stuck in the awful neck of the room, blocked by the wall, but at least the sound was a lot better there than it had been in the bar next to the stage.
This band leans a lot harder into the prog side of things than anyone else on the bill. & they sounded unbelievably together especially considering the state of the room & the fact that one of them had a medical emergency minutes earlier. I’d also really love to catch them again in a better setting.
Protest the Hero
I’ll open this by simply stating Protest the Hero never misses. They didn’t in 2006 when a churning pit of shit-stinking DragonForce nerds were screaming homophobic slurs at their lead singer, Rody Walker, & pelting them with spitballs at The Whiskey. In case you were wondering, Rody answered by saying “We were told we could play a half hour or 45 minutes & since you guys love us so much we’re going for 45.” & I think that was the moment I decided they were my favorite band & I haven’t changed my mind since.
Not only were they my favorite band, they quickly became favorites of several of of my friends. Their shows became social gatherings where I caught up with friends that had grown more & more distant as we got older & had to manage real responsibilities. As far as I know, I’ve only missed one Seattle show & that’s because I was in the hospital. Their tours were my introduction to The Number 12 Looks Like You & Thank You Scientist who also became favorites. Hell, if it wasn’t for the random kindness of their former bassist Arif Mirabdolbaghi, I never would have published a poem. He’d commented something kind on a poem I’d posted to Tumblr & I thought if the lyricist of Kezia, Fortress, & some of Scurrilous & Volition, thought one of my poems didn’t suck maybe I wasn’t an unredeemable writer after all. Protest the Hero is an irreplaceable part of who I am as a writer & musician. & since I’ve been around since the early days, their music was the soundtrack of my early adulthood, of quitting music & coming back to it, of my years of health issues & agoraphobia.
& this show was a special event. The Halloween is for Always Tour encouraged you to dress up in a costume. So I threw something together with a tiger shirt & called it the slutty Spoils video & convinced my friends to go along with it. Some of the group I hadn’t seen in person in quite awhile & it was cool to have a drink & vibe to the music wit them. But by the end of the show, it hit me hard that this may be the last or at least close to the last time this happens for us.
While I saw the band for the first time when I wasn’t even 21 yet, now we’re all pushing 40, & as far as the touring band goes, only two of the OG members remain in the touring lineup – Walker & guitarist Tim MacMillar. Guitarist Luke Hoskin still writes with them but he’s done touring & I get it. The rest of the original lineup, Mirabdolbaghi & drummer Mo Carlson, have been out for years.
The current lineup unquestionably upholds the mind-blowing quality of musicianship the band has always offered & Rody’s banter has only shifted slightly from provocative punk kid to argumentative, unmistakably Canadian dad. It is still the most consistently awe-inspiring show you could ask for pulling from the best catalog in prog metal/post-hardcore.
But there was something of a pall that hung over the show, despite the goofy costumes, despite Rody making an ass of himself over the alleged toughness of Canadian money. We’ve all heard dude say several times he’s not super stoked on touring anymore & increasingly their tours have become more and more localized to the band’s native Ontario. Not that I don’t know all good things come to an end, but it left me kinda thinking that maybe the collective time for our generation has passed. Maybe we’re all too old & tied down to do big artistic things anymore. Maybe I missed my chance.
I ended up carpooling back to town with my brother after the show & we had a heavy conversation about it all. & while I could have doom spiraled over it, I did what I always do where Protest is involved — I found the fucking inspiration in it & decided there was no better time to start playing music again.
As always, Protest is the best & I’ll be forever hoping for at least one more show before they all hang it up. If you have a chance to see them, do it.
Verses on Verses is a biweekly music column from the perspective of a poet. Inquiries can be directed to LE Francis, lefrancis@sagecigarettes.com.
LE Francis (she/her) is the managing editor of Sage Cigarettes Magazine; a columnist & staff artist for Cream Scene Carnival Magazine; co-host & staff editor of A Ghost in the Magazine & The Annegirls Podcast; & the author of THIS SPELL OF SONG & STAR available through Bottlecap Press. She is a writer, musician, & visual artist living in the rainshadow of the Washington Cascades. Find her online at nocturnical.com.
