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You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead Trail of Dead are an ambitious band, known as much for their long interesting moniker and intsrument smashing antics as for their music. Their second album, Madonna, started the word of mouth through the critics circuit which would eventually go on to praise their third album, Source Tags & Codes as the essential album of 2002. Those same critics then turned on Trail of Dead with their release of Worlds Apart. After giving Source Tags& Codes a 10.0, music's most powerful group of critics, Pitchfork, trashed Worlds Apart. The band was criticized for going commercial with their sound. And yes, Worlds Apart was not as good as it's predecessor, but it was definitely a good album. So, how do you follow up such a collapse in critical favor? Trail of Dead does it by saying "who gives a fuck" and continuing to do what they want rather than relive the past success. The result is So Divded, on which the band dives further into experimenting with elaborate orchestrations, which will most certainly hinder any major mainstream success for the album. The band no longer rocks as hard as they did in the past, and that may be exactly why So Divided is not nearly as immediately memorable as their previous records. The critics, such as Pitchfork have already stated their disatisfaction, and it's a shame because So Divided is a very good record with its biggest flaw being its ambition.
standout tracks: "Wasted State of Mind" and "Life" |