Austinist Record Review: ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead

From Tao of the Dead official website

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead:Tao of the Dead (Richter Scale Records)

“It seems that fifty years have come and gone / since the rise and fall of the radio song / what went wrong?”

This sentiment, from “Pure Radio Cosplay,” the lead single off the Trail of Dead’s new album, Tao of the Dead seems almost quaint in the context of 2011. While album-oriented radio rock has been maligned here and there for a multitude of reasons, those songs were never used to sell anything other than the records that contained them, whereas post-millennial rock music seems to be devolving before our very eyes into amorphous, inoffensive “content,” re-purposed to sell iPhones and sneakers to jaded twenty-somethings.

This hard-edged sense of nostalgia serves as the record’s statement of purpose, and that purity of feeling, however old-fashioned, accounts for Trail of Dead delivering their best LP since 2002’s Source Tags and Codes and the first legitimately awesome rock record of 2011 (and maybe 2010, too).

By this point, Trail of Dead’s blending of pompous '70s prog-rock with kinetic hardcore abandon fits them like an old sweater. Dual frontmen Conrad Keeley and Jason Reece started Trail of Dead back in the late '90s, just as the mainstreaming of punk bands like Nirvana and Sonic Youth had backwashed into a lame reiteration of soulless arena rock, and as they gained confidence in the studio they began to pull from a different set of influences entirely, filtering the studied eccentricity of prog supergroups through the lean energy of underground rock.

That balance had drifted firmly into the prog side on recent albums, typically to the detriment of the music. “Tao of The Dead” balances the scales, with stellar results. Partly produced by Austinite Frenchie Smith, the sound, centered around tweaked-out power chords and Conrad Keeley’s towering multi-tracked vocals, is pure arena rock bombast, and sounds gloriously out of step with the barely-competent collegiate R&B currently in vogue among the blog crowd. Yet the band still makes room for plentiful prog touches, such as the synth arpeggios on the Jason Reece-sung “Cover The Days Like A Tidal Wave” or the straight-up “Horse With No Name” acoustic licks on “The Wasteland.” But overall, the emphasis is on old-school guitar bashing, exquisitely rendered on “Summer of All Dead Souls.” The combination is most apparent on “Weight of the Sun,” which joins a dippy verse with one of the most explosive choruses in the Trail of Dead catalog.

It goes without saying that a majority of fans are going to listen to this record through tinny laptop speakers, and how many of them actually pay for the privilege is anyone’s guess. That’s a shame, but it’s not that important. What’s important is that somebody is still out there making legendary guitar rock albums that sound like armies of unicorns and wolverines waging war in the parking lot outside Giants Stadium while Judas Priest cranks up their first encore.

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead: [website]