This post should be about how there's some really good new music for you to go buy and immediately listen to on this Bancamp Friday, but I'm afraid it's mostly going to be about the excruciating passage of time. It has taken one of my favorite bands in the world just one year shy of the infamous 17 years it took Axl Rose to record Chinese Democracy.
That means The Protomen spent two more years tinkering on Act 3, the third part of their Mega Man-inspired rock opera saga, than Duke Nukem Forever was in development. Valve shipped Half-Life: Alyx three years faster. George R.R. Martin still has almost two years to finish The Winds of Winter more quickly than this album.
The Protomen's Act 1, a grungy, self-produced album from a bunch of recent music school graduates that blended chiptune with screaming guitars to intentionally sound "like distorted pencil sharpeners about 90% of the time" released while I was in high school. I will soon be 38 years old.
Act 2, a less grungy but far more epic fusion of Streets of Fire, Meat Loaf, and the absurd idea to take completely seriously the lore of a little blue robot boy who fights robots named things like Guts Man and Spring Man, came out in 2009—so long ago that first I learned of the band by reading Penny Arcade. I bought it day one on compact disc.
Perhaps that's enough to convey a fraction of the psychic walloping I took reading the words "Act III when??? Now." this morning, on The Protomen's website.
The album's really here, 16 years later. It's on Bandcamp and everything. Except also, somehow, it's not—only the first two tracks are! One of which The Protomen released as a demo 10 years ago!!!
"We didn’t want to go the traditional pre-order route," the Protomen explained. "Instead of making you wait (even longer) until the official release date, we’re going to unleash this story on the world episodically with a track (or 2) each week. It’s sort of like that Alien show you’ve been watching… but with sound only. And less aliens, but maybe more robots."
The official release date, then, when discs will ship to buyers, is still a few months away: "on our around January 12, 2026."
I could have died at any point over the last 16 years, of course; that is the fleeting nature of life. But suddenly I am terrified by the idea of beefing it during the next four months, as The Protomen drip feed the conclusion of this 20 year trilogy out one or two songs at a time. That would only be a slightly worse fate than finally getting to hear the whole album and just feeling like: eh, that was alright.
How likely is that, though, after cooking on this thing for so long? And besides, who else is using keytars and synths to write videogame rock operas in the year 2025? The competition isn't fierce here.
The music is, though—give the first couple tracks on Act 3: This City Made Us and tell me they don't get the blood pumping. Bet you 10 bucks (the price of the Act 3 album, by the way) it's going to be better than the Tron: Ares soundtrack.
To the band's credit, the very long wait for Act 3 was eased by multiple not-Mega-Man-themed albums they've released in the intervening years, including a killer live album of Queen covers and another of '80s anthems like Danger Zone and In the Air Tonight. But its unfinished epic was always hanging over each new release, the question of why it was taking so long, of whether it would ever be finished.
I should've known they were just channeling Rocky 4 this whole time. No shortcuts home.
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