Protestant - Reclamation

Protestant are a hardcore band with a major influence in the punk genre. Ensuring that their music becomes heard is no easy mission, and with the EP 'Reclamation'; it's certainly loud enough to deserve of a hearing. Despite the fact this EP's entirety only lasts twenty minutes, the passion within the five tracks makes up for any loss in shortness.

The vocals consist of shouting rather than screaming. To the point where it's nearly screaming but you can actually understand the majority of what the singer is saying, which becomes one of the decent attributes to the EP. Some of the tracks have a more epic feel to them with build-ups and monstrously huge sounding riffs, if the vocals didn't fit the hardcore criteria, the backing instruments could almost resemble a black metal band with the correct necessities. 'Unbecoming' becomes one of the EP's highlights with the use of an atmospheric, evil dominance, forcing itself to be heavy in more ways than possible. Whereas tracks such as 'Salad Days' reunite with the punk side of things, as Protestant play faster material than the previous songs.

The thing that bugs me the most on the EP (and where would we be without a slight bit of criticism...?) is that there isn't enough diversity, especially in the vocals. Making the EP sound repetitive throughout, which gives the band the opportunity of avoiding this on their next release. For now, 'Reclamation' will sit in my Itunes waiting for another few listens until it becomes clouded by the vast amount of bands doing similar things. I believe on Protestant's next release they'll hit the spot on perfection when realising what's been missing on here, but for now this is definitely worthy of checking out at least.

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  2. Jan Palach
  3. Reclamation
  4. Unbecoming
  5. Salad Days