Patience Is A Virtue
When Rody Walker’s vocal issues forced the band into silence, Protest The Hero had their patience tested. Now, two and a half years after work on their fifth studio album began, the fruits of their labour are ripe for picking. Guitarist Tim Millar and Walker recount the tales from his road to recovery.
Words: Phil Weller
Touring, fatherhood, more touring and near-catastrophic vocal problems; it felt like anything and everything was standing in the way of Protest The Hero completing work on their latest studio album, Palimpsest. In the wake of their serialised release Pacific Myth, its arguably misfiring predecessor, the band were determined to come back with a bang. None of their four virtuosic members, however, could have foreseen the bumps along the road that would stutter their progress time and time again. Life had given them lemons and they just had to suck them up.
“It feels like we’ve been sitting on this record for what feels like forever, so we’re just excited to finally be able vomit it out into this world,” laughs a typically high-spirited Rody Walker, the band’s vocal tour de force. He talks between reps of weights and apologises for his multi-tasking, as this is the only time of the day his young son seems to sleep, allowing him to do interviews. It was Walker, a new father, who inadvertently threw the biggest spanner into the works of the band’s latest effort back in 2018. With Protest The Hero touring the 10th anniversary of their career-crowning album Fortress, vocal issues began to flare up. Their persistence, ultimately, led to the cancellation of the rest of the tour and for the recording sessions, with only a small number of the vocals left to track, to be shelved. If the Canadian progressive metal act were going to make a triumphant return they were going to have to be patient.