Album Review: Protagonist – Fallout From The Chronicle

Earlier this year Protagonist released their compilation, or maybe a better description would be companion album to “The Chronicle“, “Fallout from The Chronicle“, that follows on from their 2015 EP “Jean Jackets In June‘. If this were back in the mists of time, and there was unscrupulous record label involved, this would probably have been a bonus disc on a reissue of “The Chronicle“, thankfully we’re not in that place and you can pick up this companion to Protagonist‘s sophomore album without repeating your previous purchase. 

 

The opening three tracks, ‘The Killing Fields‘, ‘Generation Lost‘ and ‘Reasoning with Time‘, were all recorded in 2007, but for whatever reason the band felt that they did not make sense on “The Chronicle” album, quite why they thought this is a mystery as all three would have fitted in perfectly and are three good reasons to pick up “Fallout from The Chronicle”. The band have covered three songs by The Boils, ‘Dependent‘, ‘Paper Dolls‘ and ‘Gone Dead And Buried‘, and Violent Society‘s ‘Totally Fucked‘, two bands that obviously mean a lot to Protagonist, but I can’t help thinking there must have been more than two bands that they were influenced by, or maybe it’s down to the fact that they are replaying The Boils for co-writing ‘From Florida To Philadelphia‘ that appears on the “The Chronicle“. To bring this companion album to “The Chronicle” to a close, there are acoustic versions of two tracks, ‘Iamtheghost‘ and ‘Charge‘, from the album.

 

If you don’t own “The Chronicle” then pick that up whilst you’re purchasing the companion album, as together you get the complete story of an impressive and underrated album of Floridian melodic hardcore. Hopefully this companion album will clear the decks for Protagonist to deliver some new material post lockdown because this a band that deserves to be heard, as we noted a decade ago in our review of “The Chronicle“; ‘‘Quite frankly, I’m surprised there’s not a lot more fuss about Protagonist. Maybe it’s just that enough people haven’t heard the Floridian five piece yet, because once they do I’m sure people will talk about them non-stop.”

 

“Fallout From The Chronicle” is now available via Spotify and Bandcamp