I know these records took a while, but we wanted to get them right… and I think we did! Big big thanks to Physical Music Products and Piper Payne for all their hard work pressing it (and for hand-delivering them to the Marathon shows). And let’s not forget Tommy Dorsey of Masterfonics for the pristine mastering job, and then Duncan Ferguson of The Voltage Exchange for the killer lacquering action! On top of that, big thanks for Steve Olson for coming back in for… a secret… (if you’ve already got the record from the show, try not to spoil it for everybody else!). This thing comes with all the stuff you expect, two black records, printed die-cut sleeves, and a big ol’ libretto with all the story and John DeLucca artwork you can handle, so get a copy before this first pressing is gone!

NEW T-SHIRT FOR THE RECORD RELEASE

Hold On to your butts, because we’ve got us a brand new shirt to go along with this fancy award-winning record release (what award, you ask? we don’t know yet, but let’s shoot for something!). With that being said, we’ll likely be retiring the Calling Out shirt soon, so grab that one while you can. 

NASHVILLE SHOWS
An unbelievably huge thank you to everyone that came out to the shows in Nashville. It was a wild 3 nights that shan’t be forgotten.

We were truly honored to share the stage with all of the bands who came out to help make the weekend a most spectacular celebration station. If you didn’t get a chance to see all three nights, you should really take the time and check out the bands you missed out on.

Night one…
From some of our oldest friends and fellow Boro-musicians, Imaginary Baseball League
… to our newest ally and road-warrior-hero (who jumped out of a plane and parachuted onto the stage, whipped the crowd into a frenzy, then flew right back out to join his ongoing tour on the other side of the US) Amigo the Devil.

Night two…
From the saviors of night two, Hans Condor (who, not ones to be topped by Amigo’s parachuting insanity, crashed their van through the backstage entrance, destroyed the crowd with rock and roll and threw all their shit back in the van to drive to a SECOND show in another city the SAME NIGHT)
… to the only band to out-theatricalize us in a theatrics-death-match… our long-time Dallas buddies Urizen. 

Night three…
From the throes of rock and roll history, past and present, the most incomparable, the legendary, the lord of the sax himself… Tim Capello
… to one of the finest rock bands to ever grace the Nashville scene, Diarrhea Planet. They will first win you over with their grace and kindness… and then MELT YOUR WHOLE DAMNED FACE OFF (while melting your heart). And while they may or may not be covered in liquid feces, they smell quite nice! Either way, it’s always to joy to watch them rock. 

And to top it off, Cybertonic Spree finally made it to the venue after it was over at like 3am! We all ate hot chicken and played music together for a few hours in the back gravel lot of Marathon while we were packing the trailer. Sorry you missed it! But don’t worry, there WILL be a rematch. 

And we know the merch line was insane (which is great for us, but horrible for you), so we’re working on plans to make sure that’s not a thing in Dallas (more on Dallas down below). 

Speaking of merch… 

Mostly everything that survived the Marathon shows is now available on the new Protomen store, so get to getting whilst you grab your Act III record! 

First off, REDLINE COFFEE…

Thanks a lot everyone… you crushed our dreams of quitting music so we could become a world dominating, yet benevolent, coffee empire. We had our friends at Bongo Roasting Co. roast so much wonderful coffee and none of you bought any of it (well, a few did, but we’re sitting on 3,000 lbs of coffee here!). We spent two hours after the show on Saturday night (actually Sunday morning, if you want to get technical… we were still loading out at 5am) loading it back into our trailer… a work van… every car we own… our friends’ cars… strangers’ cars… the train that ran behind the venue… we even threw some in the river). It was shocking how little coffee we sold that weekend. So I hear you saying, “… but I hate coffee, why would I buy it?” Well, thanks to Stefanie Cobb, it has the raddest package design possible and would be a great collector’s art piece for a shelf… or as a gift for any occasion… or even as a hand-tossable projectile weapon (you could even use the beans themselves in a slingshot)! Either way, the show-goers hatred of coffee is you on-liners boon, because now you can have a go at it! So please, please, please buy it all. We swear we’ve learned our lesson and will stick to music and never make any coffee ever again! … or will we…

COFFEE MUGS

You may hate coffee, but you sure seem to love mugs. Does that make you posers?? Either way, we’re not complaining or judging, we just wish you’d buy something to go in that mug… like maybe you’d like 4 packs of damn fine Redline Coffee??? But yeah, we ran out of mugs at the show (aside from two boxes that showed up late to the party), so we’re doing another short run of these for the online store, but will likely transition to a new design soon. Get these while you can. 

3 NIGHTS – 3 ACTS – NASHVILLE POSTERS*

We’ve got a few of the Nashville/Marathon show posters left over that we’d love for you to take off our hands. They look incredibly rad (thanks to Stefanie again). But once these are gone, they’re gone… foorrreevverrrr.

*one quick note, though. If you want a signed one of these, maybe hold off buying one on this store right now, because we’re gonna release a really limited quantity of signed ones on our Bandcamp for the next Bandcamp Friday on August 7th, so just a heads up about that. 

TOTES

We also have some totes left over from the show, but we’ll probably keep pressing them for a while, so no real FOMO on these, unless you don’t buy them… then we won’t press them anymore. So I guess that means you need to buy them so you can buy them. Because if you don’t buy them you won’t be able to buy them anymore. Sort of seems like a commerce paradox? 

ACTS I & II ON CD + ACT I BASEBALL TEE
Also, Act I and Act II CDs are back in stock on the store, as well as the new Act I Baseball Tee:

DALLAS SHOWS – AUGUST 27th, 28th, 29th

Everybody got their Dallas tickets lined up? Things are starting to move now, so if you’re wanting to go, better grab tickets sooner than later before they’re gone. And if you can’t go, but know somebody that should… tell them to get on it ASAP. Again, please help spread the word, the faster this show sells out, the quicker we can decide on how doable this is in other cities with the bigger venue sizes that make it make sense for us to bring this whole ridiculous 3-day event on the road. 

AUGUST
27th – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater – Act II
28th – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater – Act I
29th – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater – Act III

JAPAN
So here’s the deal… we want to play in Japan. Anybody know anybody that runs any festivals or conventions over there? Do any of you happen to own the Tokyo Game Show? Do you happen to own Capcom and want us to play your event? If so, call us up… we like doing stuff. 

See you all in Dallas with your Redline Coffee in hand!

-Commander

Welcome to the new Act III site. We hope you dig it. As ever this heralds the beginning of what will be an evolving online Protomen experience, so stay tuned.

The site was built out from pieces of John DeLucca’s original paintings for the Act III album cover. It was designed by myself and The Protomen, and was developed by Jules Janssen. We’d also like to give Michael Eades a shout out for his help with the previous “under construction” website, and the foundations of the site you see now.

-Caspar

Hold on to your butts, because this is gonna be a long one (but it’s got a bunch of pictures… but I’d recommend reading it anyway)… 

The Nashville Act III release shows are upon us! Tonight is Act II, tomorrow is Act I, and Saturday is Act III!

It’s been a long time coming, but I think we’re ready. It’s looking like we’re all staring down the barrel of 3 rad nights. Can’t wait to see you all at Marathon. 

Speaking of which, you’ve likely made it to Nashville and you’re probably wondering what you should do during the day before heading to the venue? Well, go ahead and check out this list of stuff to do around town that we put together for Do615. It’s a rad local organization that helps everyone figure out the goings-ons and what’s going down in Nashville. (be sure to follow the link at the bottom of the Do615 page for the full list of stuff!)

After you’ve done a bunch of fun Nashville stuff, get to the show and check out all the new merch we’ve got going. I’m gonna bury the lead, so don’t stop reading the mailer, if you’ve made it this far. 

First off…. PROTOMEN COFFEE!
We partnered with local coffee roaster, Bongo Roasting Co. to do a run of Protomen coffee. It makes a damn fine cup of coffee, and the package looks rad. Power thanks to Stefanie Cobb for designing that… as well as a few things below.

We also have a Protomen coffee cup to go along with it!

TOTE BAGS!
If you need to carry all the new stuff, we’ve got you covered with a pretty cool tote bag. 

POSTCARDS!
We now have postcards of all the Act III song posters. Send them to all your friends across the globe. And I guess send some of them to randos, we hear randos love postcards about bands they’ve never heard of. 

SHIRTS!
We’ve got a couple/few (depending on how you look at it) new shirts going on. 

First off, we have our friends at Grand Palace live on the scene printing the new show T-shirts. The fun thing about those is that you’ll be able to choose your color shirt (Black shirt or Red Heather) while watching them screen print the fronts. And each night has its own corresponding album logo on the front, with the back design being the same across all 3 nights. These are limited to the night of the show, so get one while you can!

Then we have a new Act I baseball-T shirt that looks awesome. 

SHOW POSTER!
This new show poster is now one of my favorite posters so far, courtesy of Stefanie again. 

and… BEER!
We teamed up with Jackalope Brewing to have a ProtoBeer at this show! You won’t be able to buy a 6 pack and take it home or anything, but we’ve heard they’ll let you take home the empty cans, if you want to keep them. Just ask at the bar when you buy it…. and remember to tip your bartenders!

oh, right… back to the lead….

ACT III RECORDS…
are done! And you can grab your copy (or copies??) at the shows this weekend. We’re gonna have regular Black records, as well as limited show-exclusive Clear records at the shows, and then they’ll hit our online stores shortly after. This thing has been a journey getting them made, but they turned out great. And a huuuge thanks to Physical Music Products for all their help/work on this project. By far the best record plant experience we’ve ever had. 

DALLAS, TX —-> 3 NIGHTS – 3 ACTS … AGAIN!
VIP passes are long gone for the August 27th-29th shows at the Granada Theater, but we still have 3-day passes available, so grab them while you can! And if you don’t live around Dallas or can’t make the trip, please spread the word about it. The better Dallas does, the more likely it is we can try to do these 3 night events in other places. And what we really mean by that is….if Dallas doesn’t do well…..welllllll…..don’t cry that this 3 Day event never happens again.

AUGUST
27th – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater – Act II
28th – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater – Act I
29th – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater – Act III

That’s all for now, 

-Commander