MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Fans of The Protomen have been waiting for the band to finish their Mega Man inspired trilogy for over a decade now. Frontman Raul Panther III has broken his long silence to explain why the album is taking so long: Yellow Devil.
“I finished the rest of the album in 2011,” The singer recently admitted. “But I just can’t finish this Yellow Devil song. I’ve come close a bunch of times, just a few notes away from the perfect song. Then it all falls apart and I have to start over. It’s incredibly frustrating but I just can’t stop. I’ve actually broken a lot of guitars raging after attempts to finish the song which has slowed things down too.”
When pressed for details Raul explained why the song is so difficult to write and perform.
“It’s a really complex song,” Panther III said. “It’s this big, nineteen-part song about an epic battle against a giant yellow robot. To keep things fresh I never play those parts in the same order. It’s a big part of why it’s such a struggle, but I think it’ll be worth it when I finally finish. There’s also a moment I can never quite get vocally, a high note in the center of one part that’s just a little too high for me to hit. I’ve started to visualize it as a sort of glowing red eye in the middle of the song. If I could just hit that eye every time…”
Drummer Reanimator Lovejoy has expressed concern for his bandmate’s mental health.
“Raul has absolutely lost it,” Lovejoy claims. “He just keeps working on that one song and refuses to move on. We don’t really need the song, Yellow Devil isn’t even a character in the story, he’s just a big robot guy. The rest of the band has been trying to get him to move on to something else, even if it’s not The Protomen. Commander B. Hawkins suggested we pivot into a folk-rock Zelda band but Raul said he just needed one more try. He’s been saying just one more try for years now.”
At press time, the third Protomen album still has no release date as they refuse to rely on savestates.
