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In his review of ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead's latest, the vinyl-only EP, Festival Thyme, Paste writer David Marek lamented that the band has "been running headlong in the wrong direction for
the past five years." With few exceptions, I'm inclined to agree with him. What was once a thoroughly pulverizing rock juggernaut has, for whatever reason, gone ponderously soft and uninteresting on us.
For a group of dudes who don't seem to smile very often, ...TOD's rather serious tendency to rock has all but ceased to exist on the band's recent albums. To that I say, lighten up, fellas! You guys made some excellent records. Alas, I'm told the band can still bring it live from time to time, but if it keeps making subpar albums, what's the point?
Lo and behold, just days after Marek's review hit the Paste site, a stream of ...Trail of Dead's forthcoming, currently-untitled record emerged in my inbox. Come along, dear reader, and let's see what it's like:
1. Overblown intro song: CHECK. Sets a nice scene, though.
2. "Isis Unveiled" starts out with a promising riff, but devolves into a derivative, never-ending chug. Next!
3. Decent guitar freak-out leads into (whaaa?) choir of women singing. I miss Source Tags & Codes.
4. "I felt like Sataaaaaaaan." Ugh. This from "Bells of Creation," which is from aforementioned vinyl EP. Marek called it right with "generic alt rock flourishes" and "vintage ...TOD crescendo," but the former outweighs the latter.
5. "Fields of Coal" is possibly the worst ...TOD song ever written.
6. I may have spoken too soon. Its follow-up, "Inland Sea," is making a bid for the #1 spot, all whiny vocals and musical bridges to nowhere.
7. An acoustic track! Surprisingly, I don't hate it ("Luna Park") as much as the last two tracks, despite the fact that it kind of reminds me of Smashing Pumpkins. This one and its polar opposite brother (a bile spitter of a song called "Ascending") try and fail to save the second half of this record.
8. "Insatiable Two," really? "Insatiable One" wasn't enough? I really miss Source Tags & Codes.
9. The problem, it seems, is that ...TOD can no longer craft a truly great song, just a truly great idea in the middle of a too-long musical opus fraught with myriad bad ideas. It's a shame, but this album appears to be just one more step towards irrelevance for the once mighty ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead.
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really think you should pay attention to this album. As a writer, I too received this link and i can't stop listening to it. it's a great album and such a giant leap forward for this otherwise plagued band. Seeing what you all write about here on a monthly basis, it just seems normal to see you dudes knock something you aren't really prone to sleeping to. You need to stop living in the paste Source Tags and Codes already is released. If you wanna celebrate that record, go buy it again.
while i too am no fan of TOD's recent work, i cannot help but be disappointed that this has been published under the paste banner. the very LACK of THIS type of slam criticism is why i usually turn to paste. for a moment i thought i had mis-clicked a link and wound up at pitchfork.