Six years after their last Australian run, Detroit post-punk titans Protomartyr are finally returning to Australian shores.
Known for pairing raw, squalling instrumentation with front-man Joe Casey’s sharp, literate lyricism, the band has spent over a decade navigating the shifting tides of the music industry by doing things their own way.
Ahead of their upcoming tour, Casey opened up about the band’s chaotic origins, creative process and preparing for a new era of Protomartyr.
Protomartyr Australian Tour 2026
- Thursday, June 18 – Mary’s Underground, Sydney [Sold out]
- Friday, June 19 – The Night Cat, Melbourne [Sold out]
- Saturday, June 20 – Against the Grain Festival, The Princess Theatre, Brisbane
- Sunday, June 21 – Dark Mofo, Altar, Hobart [Sold out]
- Tuesday, June 23 – The Night Cat, Melbourne [Second show added]
- Tickets here
Check out our gig guide, our festival guide, our live music venue guide and our nightclub guide. Follow us on Instagram here.
View this post on Instagram
The band’s earliest days were, by Casey’s own admission, beautifully confused.
“The early days were just about playing our first shows,” he says.
“When we started, Greg and Alex had a band called Butt Babies. I cajoled them into doing a side project with me. They would play their set as Butt Babies, and then I would stumble up on stage, sing two songs, and stumble off. It was a good gimmick for a while because people were genuinely confused.”
A chance encounter at South by Southwest would prove equally accidental. Greg Ahee let Kelly Deal out of a locked bathroom, and I asked Casey how on earth she’d ended up in there. “We still don’t know,” he laughs.
A lifelong collaboration was born from that moment. “She remembered that we were nice to her that day, and that initial interaction led to the lifelong friendship we have now.”
That commitment to doing things the organic way runs through everything Protomartyr do. As a band that has always prioritised raw expression over industry trends, it’s no surprise Casey has little patience for AI creeping into creative fields.
“I’m pretty against AI in all its forms,” he says. “When people tell me I should be impressed by AI art, I compare it to driving a car. If someone drives a car five miles and says, ‘Look what I did,’ and someone else runs five miles, I’m always going to be more impressed by the person who ran.”
He’s particularly sceptical of its application to creativity:
“It’s telling that the first thing developers went after was creative expression, which is probably the thing AI is worst at.
“When a human screws up, it’s clear how and why they did it. With AI, the errors are baked into the system.”
The same instinct toward authenticity shapes his advice to younger artists navigating the relentless demands of social media.
“If I got to them early enough, I’d say: ‘Don’t do it,'” he says of content culture.
“The music is what makes us interesting, not the fact that I’m eating dinner and want you to see a picture of it.”
He’s pragmatic rather than precious about it, though. “If you see a funny TikTok featuring a band, I’m not going to follow them; I’m going to laugh and move on. You’re already eating a bag of corn chips, and that band is just a single chip you ate. It has no staying power. You’re going to shit it out eight hours later.”
I was interested in finding out which elements compel Casey most when he listens to his favourite songwriters. As someone who writes lyrics, you might expect words to come first. Not quite.
“Realistically, there are only a handful of songs I love where I could recite every word or tell you exactly what they mean,” he says. “It’s usually the music and the way the overall experience hits you.”
It’s a lesson he learned the hard way.
“Early on, I thought the guys in the band were just going to be my vessel to stardom and success,” he laughs. “I didn’t care much about the music, beyond knowing I wanted it to sound raw and realistic. But after being a band for so long, I realise our longevity relies heavily on the music surrounding my words. Otherwise, I’d just be yelling over noise, which was definitely my first inclination.”
Lyrically, Casey’s touchstones run deep. He grew up obsessing over U2 before pivoting sharply to The Pogues.
“That’s when I really began focusing on lyrics, because Shane MacGowan’s writing resonated with me deeply.”
Irish writers shaped his literary voice too, with James Joyce and Flann O’Brien looming large. These days, with a new baby limiting reading time, he gravitates toward poetry:
“I figure I should probably study the craft of poetry rather than just picking up a crime novel.”
His creative process is fittingly scrappy. Casey keeps a running Notes app full of phrases stripped of their original context, “this incoherent stack of words, phrases, and ideas”, which he pairs against rough demos from guitarist Ahee and drummer Alex Leonard.
I asked him about the tension between his restlessness and the band’s need to breathe.
“The second we finish recording a record, I’m pushing to get back in the room,” he admits.
“Once the engine is running and the wheels are turning, it’s better to keep driving.”
Greg Ahee, he says, is the necessary counterweight. “Greg is a perfectionist. I’m a perfectionist only up to a point, because I think a lot of great music relies on luck, happenstance, and mistakes. We aren’t inventing a new method of brain surgery; we’re writing songs. Besides, I’m old enough that I’ve done enough resting. I was incredibly lazy in my 20s, 30s, and 40s.”
Fatherhood, he admits, has seeped into his writing despite his best efforts otherwise.
“I explicitly promised Greg: ‘I’m not going to write a bunch of lyrics about how fatherhood changed me or how beautiful my baby is.'” He pauses. “Of course, I said that before the kid was born. Once they arrive, it’s a life-changing event and it becomes incredibly difficult not to go down that road.”
Instead, he channelled those feelings sideways. “I looked at the state of the world through the lens of a parent, feeling very frightened and angry.”
I was curious what he remembered from Protomartyr’s last Australian visit in 2018. The memories, it turns out, are hazy for a very specific reason.
“It was our first experience playing a show and immediately jumping on a flight to the next city the very next day,” he says.
“We arrived seriously jet-lagged, and the very first thing they did was take us to a koala sanctuary. Growing up, koalas were my favourite animal, but I was so out of it that my only real memory is the physical photo they took. My brain wasn’t online while I was holding this animal I loved.”
As for the upcoming Australian run, fans can expect a setlist spanning the full breadth of Protomartyr’s catalogue, plus road-tests of brand-new material.
Kelly Deal won’t be joining this time, with Michigan underground legend Fred Thomas, formerly of Tyvek, stepping in as fifth member.
“We’re very lucky to have him filling things out,” Casey says warmly.
Casey’s hopes for the tour are simple. “I just hope it doesn’t take us another six years to come back, because we had an absolute blast last time.”
Protomartyr tour Australia this June.
