Sometimes, you look at the state of things in the world—let alone America—and wonder if it’s going to be okay.
Promomartyr has an answer to that question: Probably not.
The Detroit quartet doesn’t mince words or moods on its brilliant seventh album, which holds a mirror up to American society and politics in the modern age. I hesitate to say “in the Trump era” because, while things haven’t exactly improved since 2016, it’s not like we were living in a utopia prior to that. America is more than whoever sits in the Oval Office; it is all of us, the decisions we make very day, who we allow to represent us, and what we allow to happen to our fellow man.
If you live in a bubble and watch only one news network that tells you everything is fine and everyone who doesn’t think so should just move away, then you won’t agree with what Protomartyr finds when they dig deep. The fictional hotel of the title is a postmodern America, with each room (and song) representing a different decay—religious extremism, toxic patriotism, the use of drones in war, how we treat immigrants (illegal or not, they are still fucking human beings), the rise of AI, desensitization to media, and a glorification of violence. As I type these words, the U.S. government is planning to livestream an execution and right-wingers in comments sections are cheering for this, and I can’t paint a picture any bleaker of how far off the rails we are heading into a dystopia than that.
But Protomartyr does an admirable job of painting such a picture. Across its nine tracks and 45 minutes, Hotel Usona mixes post-punk, hard rock and even flavors of jazz, with sonic layers upon layers enhancing the spoken/shouted vocals. It’s sort of a photo negative of Muse, but without the calls to action. If there’s anything 
Hotel Usona lacks, it’s a will to live after peering back the façade, and that bleakness may be a turnoff for some.
All of the songs are solid, though all of a piece, making the album almost compulsory to listen to as a unit. Lyrics like “Incarceration, that’s the policy / Wealth rules, that’s the policy / Hail, whitе god, that’s the policy / Male supremacy, that’s thе policy,” from “Exalted Eagles” illustrate the worldview of America’s total awesomeness and selection by God as the most greatest bestest country of all times (Fox News wrote this song).
“Feed The Sewer” calls out why data centers have become necessary: “A shot of mundane horror that keeps you locked up tight / Gonna give it to you narrow and shallow / A shaft of violent light / That river of psychosis saps the will to fight.” That’s what doomscrolling is; as you swipe endlessly on Facebook and see a news story about a livestreamed execution, then an ad for Burger King, then a listicle of “Where Is The Cast of ‘Home Improvement’ Now?,” then a news story about hundreds of children in Gaza being bombed, and it all just blurs together on your phone until you fall asleep, numb to what you actually just read. And when you refresh the page, it’s like nothing happened. Meanwhile, data centers churn through water to bring you this content day after day.
The band brings a sardonic eye to the rich and powerful who let this happen on “Third Country,” which is almost sarcastically upbeat (compared to the rest of the album) in calling out those who cause the problems and then jet off to Aruba or Epstein Island to live their secret, problem-free lives. Religious hypocrites get called out in “Converts,” where two “feeble-minded” missionaries are staying at the hotel and going through a number of symbolic gestures, with the closing line “If deeds and words are your worth, perhaps conversion failed” perhaps saying that religion should not be performative, nor does it fully define you as a person, nor especially does it absolve you from ignoring your fellow man and living in a bubble of K-Love and Bible study groups and bake sales.
The closing track “Checking Out” is the least musically engaging but the most vivid with its bleak imagery, with references to “the venal are thriving” and “residents chewing funeral shrouds” and “rasping locusts” and “The Oaf Brigade.” Yet Joe Casey, for all his desire to check out of a hopeless society, still suggests that perhaps if we were to go back in time to before things got like this, he’d feel welcome again.
Those of a certain age will remember the Hotel California as a place you can never leave. But where that was a metaphor for addiction, the Hotel Usona is a metaphor for America’s worst characteristics. It’s bleak, but it’s meant to be… you have to name the demon, and face it, in order to defeat it. So maybe there’s a little bit of light after all. But it’s up to us to want it.