Whitby's prog-metal machine, Protest The Hero, is set to head out again on a tour of Europe and the States. The lads have just returned from a European jaunt but such is the interest in their disc Fortress that the road beckons once more.

Metacritic.com, a website that publishes a list of best albums based on reviews from a wide variety of sources, has the album hovering just below the Top Ten for the Year. PTH will tour America with As I Lay Dying and hit Germany in March.

The band is back home for the holiday break but will play the Sound Academy in Toronto on Dec. 17 as part of Underground Operations Ho! Down celebrations. Lights and The Artist Life are also on the bill.

It's a good time to catch up so I met lead Rody Walker last week at the Gryphon in Whitby for a chat. Cutthroat Clothing entrepreneur Adam Hare joined us. Adam's day job with Universal has had him chaperone Gene Simmons about Hogtown. Gene, it seems, is quite vain about his hair. An endless supply of hairspray was in order to keep the hair helmet just so.

Walker is wonderful company. We spoke for almost two hours. At the Sound Academy gig, he will play an acoustic set. He is billed as the Last True Rock N Roller. I doubt he's the last but he most definitely has found his footing as a frontman. I find him fearless in his opinions. The recent remix of Fortress ... (PTH with dance beats) is, he says, "not worth listening to .... it's not very good ... I find it almost unlistenable."

While there is not that much sightseeing time for a band on tour, Rody declares his favourite city to be St. Petersburg, home to Pushkin and Nabakov among others. It turns out that it's not only bassist and lyricist Arif Mirabdolbaghi who is of a literary bent. Walker has a fondness for Russian literature and Dostoevsky in particular.

PTH has always maintained it drew its creative courage from the boredom of suburban life. The band's golden cage is far removed from the grimy cells which held Russian writers but there are parallels in the inmates' approach. All chose to create within the walls. All chose faith in freedom and hope in participating in life. While Fortress is no Crime and Punishment, it is one of the most interesting albums of 2008 and I would agree with Metacritics as to its importance to the year. I would place it higher up on the list though.