Attempted Martyr - produced by Chris Koltay (The Armed, Mdou Moctar) - has been steadily accruing devoted followers and accolades since its original release: Pitchfork and Anthony Fantano reviewed, while Stereogum and The Quietus spoke to the band. Loosely a concept album, Attempted Martyr is a full-spectrum blast of acerbic noise, sampler shrapnel, savagely mordant humour and bruised melancholy. Its complexity and simmered rage conjure a fever dream of hope, desperation and alienation, a riot of artful profanity, disturbing imagery and blacker-than-midnight wit. An album for these perilous, cursed times, even if it wasn’t conceived as such, Attempted Martyr isn’t noise for its own sake, it’s for everyone’s: a catharsis, a venting, a return of fire.
Based in Dearborn, MI, a town with America’s largest Muslim population, Prostitute were founded by Moe (frontman) and Andrew (drummer) who together write the group’s lyrics, and conceived Attempted Martyr’s thematic throughline. Moe explains, “I had an identity crisis, growing up, 9/11 started a lot of xenophobia and Arab hatred and all that kind of shit. I hated being Arabic. I hated Arabs in general, just because people were hating me. Through much of my 20s I felt like, ‘How about I be the character you want me to be?’” Andrew took that crisis and, explains Moe, “ran with it, and made the philosophy behind it, this ‘radical terrorism’, this crazed zealot thing.”
To complete the band, Ross, Bret and Dylan soon came onboard. “It’s all a bit serendipitous,” says Andrew. Each of the members were raised in Dearborn, went to the same schools, orbited the same groups of people and crossed paths before eventually meeting each other and coming together as a band.
The reaction has been incredible: the audience they have found are dedicated to investigating the infinite nuances within their attack, especially as the themes have swung to the fore of the culture in the years since they conceived it. “When we started the album, the war in Gaza hadn’t begun yet,” says Andrew. “But the world was still pretty fucked up. It already felt like the car was going off the cliff, with no-one at the wheel. There’s an angst to the album. I’m not religious, but I’ve always been drawn to art and stories about religion – this yearning for transcendence, for an answer, for forgiveness. The album is about someone trying to transcend in some way. This character is reprehensible. But we're not trying to tell anyone what to think. This isn’t some manifesto – this is art, it’s an outlet for things we were feeling.”
Attempted Martyr is out now on vinyl, CD and digitally via Mute.
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