…And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead
Listening to the new album from Austin’s …Trail of Dead reminds me of a 1992 quote from Faith No More’s keyboardist Roddy Bottum, regarding their tour mates Guns N’ Roses, who had morphed from a gritty LA sleaze-metal band into a bloated juggernaut: “I’m getting more and more confused about who’s in Guns N’ Roses, and it’s blowing my mind. Onstage now there’s a horn section, two chick backup singers, two keyboard players, an airplane pilot, a basketball coach, a coupla car mechanics…”
“Stand in Silence,” the first proper song on the album, summarizes this frustration. The track opens with a classic TOD riff; the rhythm marches with a staggering, swaying funk backbeat while the vocals call the listener to action. But just as the song is about to take it to the bridge, it skids off the rails into a confusing symphonic second movement that sounds completely removed from the rock & roll book-ending it. The same thing happens to “Naked Sun,” which inexplicably transforms from a bluesy shuffle into more overwrought Tolkien-soundtrack shenanigans.
When …Trail of Dead keep it simple, like on the title track, they’re still powerful, but overall So Divided is a mess with a badass rock record buried somewhere inside. VS