Protomartyr is a great band, but Protomartyr is a sham. Even though their most recent record, Agent Intellect, is so good that when the band comes to my town I will cheer just as loudly for their new songs as their old ones, Protomartyr’s name costs them all of their hard-earned credibility.

Few may believe it, but what the band calls themselves, well, it’s all a lie.

We can’t argue whether or not the members of the group have set out to be martyrs; only time will tell us how and why Protomartyr’s career will kick the bucket. We do, however, know for a fact that Protomartyr is not a protomartyr: Innumerable bands have chosen their own causes over careers before Protomartyr’s members were even old enough to understand what a protomartyr is (although, as their ill-fitting name shows here, I’m still not convinced they do).

Here are five martyr-like artists who beat Protomartyr to the stake.

The Replacements

Arguably the most influential heart-on-the-sleeve band of all time, The Replacements never cared about fulfilling anyone’s desires but their own. Even when they decided to finally earn some cash and move up to the big leagues, they purposefully bombed important shows. When the ‘Mats infamously appeared on Saturday Night Live, their performance and backstage antics got them permanently banned. When the Replacements reunited in 2012 after a 22-year hiatus, they toured until meeting fan demands became too much of a chore. This wasn’t a victory lap, but a slow, defeated march; as Paul Westerberg’s shirt spelt out over their last three weeks together, “I have always loved you. Now I must whore my past.”

New Radicals

New Radicals, aka the band who was as into mirroring letters as Korn or the band who wanted to kick Marilyn Mason’s ass in, was essentially a one-off project by Gregg Alexander that essentially one-offed him in the end. I imagine New Radicals is what Radiohead would have been had they thrown in the towel after “Creep” became their signature song. Alas, Alexander sure as hell didn’t want to die playing “You Get What You Give” night after night, and that surely killed his career.

Death Grips

Death Grips tied the chord and kicked the chair for their own cause, but what exactly was their cause? And were they even a band? When they announced their departure in July 2014, they claimed to be a “conceptual art exhibition.” Based on some of their mid-career material, I probably wouldn’t argue with that assertion. As for their cause, well, not all martyrs died for clear-cut beliefs. In the same farewell note, the “band” told their fans to “stay legend,” which I can assume only means that their devoted following has since gone as awkwardly into the night as they did, for whatever absurd reason it wanted to.

LCD Soundsystem

Some martyrs are just more humble than others. Of all the bands listed here, LCD Soundsystem made the biggest stink over their martyrdom, capturing the entire process on film and making a documentary out of the footage. To be fair, when LCD Soundsystem called it quits in 2011, they shook their young-white-male audience to its core. The band was at the height of its commercial appeal and arguably making their best tunes yet. However, James Murphy, at the wise age of 41, decided it was the perfect time to quit on his own terms. The man simply didn’t care about getting bigger and better as LCD Soundsystem. Instead, Murphy wanted to create new and different music under a new and different name, which just so happened to be his own.

CeeLo Green

We all have martyrs we look up to. Hell, I even admire a name or two on this very list. But while CeeLo Green is assuredly a first-class martyr, he is also a human garbage can. In 2014, in the wake of dropped sexual battery claims, CeeLo let the world in on his horrifying views regarding consent and rape via Twitter. As a result, he lost his spot on The Voice, his TBS series The Good Life and any musical kudos he had built up over a decades-long career. It’s hard to imagine we were once all this close to forgiving CeeLo for “Fuck You,” but so it goes. Fuck you, CeeLo.