Protest the Hero Interview

Interview with Arif Mirabdolbaghi of Protest the Hero

Words by Brendan Monteiro / Photographs by Marcus Maschwitz

So firstly, Protest the Hero, different type of name, quite ironic. How did you come about that name?
It’s actually a remnant from our more actively politically consciences days when we were younger. But I guess the name to us has evolved and changed as time has gone on, I always try and look at it as protest as an action is in itself a kind of heroism. To be honest with you I’ve never met a band that isn’t sick of their name. Im sure we even have fans and critics out there who are sick of it, just imagine how many times we have to hear it. Protest the Hero this and Protest the Hero that. We’d change it if we could but we couldn’t think of anything better.

So you would actually change the name?
Absolutely!

Have you got any names you would go for?
I don’t know. I’d probably pick an animal that I liked. I also like the name Cheddar Cheese and the Mousetrap. It’s kind of funny but doesn’t really suite our music.

So you guys have been touring non-stop for quite some time now. Do you guys ever wear out and how do you keep going on?
YES! We wore out years ago, but as cliché and obvious and cheesy as it sounds. The 30 or 45 minutes a day when I get to go on stage really is a rush. Your playing music which I and the other guys in the band obviously enjoy doing. There’s communication and interaction going with the audience and listeners. And there’s this incredible feeling that somehow I have managed to come overseas to play songs to people and connect with people in such a unique way and that kind of gets me through. Any time I’m really bummed out or I’m feeling particularly unmotivated I try and realise that its not an opportunity I should take for granted. It’s something that’s temporary in my life. And if im able to do it now then I should make the absolute most of it. Because there are bands out there that probably have worked harder than we have or deserve it more or who are more talented than us who just didn’t have that stroke of luck it takes to start touring.

There seems to be a reputation that you guys are a quite party band and tend to wreck stuff. Is that true or just a misconception?
Our singer says it well when he say’s that we don’t party we get drunk. There’s a big difference. We just sit in the back room and slowly have one beer and then two and after a little while your drunk. I wouldn’t say we were particularly belligerent. If things have been broken then I’m sure that it was purely accidental. I’m sure that we felt remorse about it afterward. Sometimes people will come out to the shows and come and hang out with us and there is this strange reputation that puts this obligation or pressure on us to be raging and partying all the time but I don’t think that’s really the kind of people that we are. The drummer and I smoke a lot of weed but I don’t necessarily drink all that much. I have a few beers on stage and a few after and get a little wobbly but I don’t go around smashing things. We have a couple of time I guess. Like anyone else though. I think if you take any group of guys specifically, but girls too. At some point in their career of having hang out with one another they have smashed some shit or burgled some stuff or dropped a couple of things. It bound to happen. So I don’t think it’s a necessarily well-bounded reputation. However if it works for the press than so be it.

Any antics occurring on this tour?
Well one of the guys in the Human Abstract is definitely allergic to peanuts. So we have been trying to think of scams. He plays the keys so maybe spread some peanut butter on his keys or maybe if we order a Thai pizza with a peanut base on it. You would never think there would be peanut on a pizza. Then he would eat it. I also thought of a really brutal and savage way of murdering him. And I should state that he’s a really young guy and really enthusiastic, and that can be a pain in the ass sometimes. This is all stuff I tell to his face. I was thinking if you took a glass jar of peanut butter and just smashed it against his face. The glass would probably create cuts and then the peanut butter would get in the cuts and probably accelerate his death.

Is concocting up ways to murder people something you do a lot in your spare time?
Ah no, just his. I love the guy, I think he’s great. Your expected if you’re 17 years old on tour to get razzed a little bit. I feel a trojan responsibility towards giving him a bit of a hard time. Undoubtedly it’s a hilarious allergy to have.

A lot of your tours or tours that you have been on, you seem to stick out a bit. Does being different to the bands your touring with make it HARDER?
I think it ensures that there’s not going to be a tour that 100 percent of the audience or any vast majority of the audience actually likes us. I guess we often say that because we do a pretty diverse amount of touring with a diverse group of bands. Now and again we will be playing with really heavy bands and we will be the pussiest band on the bill. And every once in a while we will be playing with Silverstein or some very soft kind of band and we will be the hardest band on the bill. So I guess if you don’t fit in anywhere particularly then you fit in a little bit everywhere. It’s worked out to benefit us. I’d rather that than be a real “gas station” version of a band. I also think diversity makes for the best shows. I don’t know anyone whose ipod is specifically immersed in one particular genre. I think that everybody listens to opposite ends of the spectrum and it only makes sense to have a little diversity. I guess there are people out there who don’t really listen to anything outside of what they are comfortable with. I just feel sorry for them.

You have quite the following on tablature sites. How do you feel about people holding your music in such high regard?
It’s flattering. It’s not often very mature musicians. It’s a lot of younger kids who are just starting to play. I think it’s very flattering. Whenever someone is taking the time to really analyze and dissect the music that your playing and taking the time to learn it, I feel as though I’m giving them a homework assignment. I used to do that kind of stuff and still to an extent I do when I’m at home. As much as I’ve never fully come to accept the fact that maybe someone views my playing or my bands playing in the way that I view other bands playing. It’s a very surreal feeling as you might imagine. I will say that I’ve looked at a few tabs and a couple of those guys are just out to lunch. It’s either bang on or horribly wrong.

Like say for instance tabcrawler.com. There are some shocking one’s on there.
Oh my God. Absolutely! You really wonder what their ears are like. They have no sense of pitch at all.

How do you feel about people profiteering from your band name? I saw on E-bay a guy selling tabs of your, but unofficial one’s.
It puts me between a rock and a hard place. Personally it sucks, maybe I’m losing some money but then again everything is working out for the band and I don’t want to judge how someone earns their living. It’s just not something I would personally do. But if there is a demand for it and they are filling a void that we haven’t been able to then more power to them. I guess that should galvanise us to create an actual tab book.

The music that you write is quite intricate and your lyrics are on the same par. What is the next step forward for you?
We try to keep the basic idea very simple. To challenge ourselves somewhat and to create something that is harmonically unique and try and use tones and try having a sonic pallet that is maybe I guess unconventional. You can take different styles and merge them together and create something new out of it. But because we thought that some of the music was in a sense complicated, we thought we could get away with having lyrics that are a little complicated as well. I like to think that we keep the listener’s ear occupied. We’re trying not to bore people. With that being said, we don’t often use a lot of dissidence. We are very much fond of harmony and we are very much fond of music that in some sense sounds beautiful. We do like that. As far as new songs are concerned that’s more towards the direction we are going to be going. It’s probably going to be a bit faster. But trying to keep in mind that we do want singing to be involved and we do want melodies and hooks and catchy parts. We don’t want to however over do it with them.

So have you started any work on a new album then?
Very briefly, we haven’t had a lot of time to concretise any of the songs but we do have a sort of grab bag of riffs. Usually we set up a white board and just dot down the names, we give the riffs different names, and just try playing them in different orders. I think the difference between Kezia and Fortress is that there is a more intelligent composition on fortress. I think we realised what translates live a lot better. Where were able to embellish and where we ought to restrain. So hopefully if we can further ourselves in tasteful musicianship then the people who listen to the band for the reasons that we write songs, which I’m under the impression that you are, will continue liking us. And anyone else we can sort of trim the fat off our audience.

A lot of you songs end in a sort of prelude part that is completely different to the core of the song. Is that something you guys consciously enjoy adding?
I think that’s a very astute observation on your part. We get a lot of people saying we have such an unconventional song structure and all the songs follow different paths. I think that in the way we write there is a kind of formulae. We often like to have a slow chorusy kind of part towards the end of the song. I guess we realised sometime during the writing process that we were doing that more often than not and I guess that’s a thread of compositional consistency that goes throughout our music.

So lastly, is there anything you would like to say to South Africa and your fans out there?
I would put our earnest plea to any promoters out there who are willing to have us out to please get in contact with our manager and booking agent and lets make this work. It would be and absolute thrill for us to go to South Africa to play. It’s been on the list of places we want to play for a long time now. So if anyone would be interested in having us out there. Please, I seriously urge you to get in contact with us.

Well thanks again.
Thank you.

Posted on Monday, 9 March 2009 in Interviews, Mainarticles | 3 Comments »
Tagged as Arif Mirabdolbaghi, Protest the Hero, Vagrant Records