...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead: Source Tags & Codes : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Best known for leaving stages spattered with blood and pulverized equipment, these Texas screamers have built a castle atop the wreckage with their third album: forbidding and imposing on the outside, grand and luxurious within. Trail of Dead still play as if they get a bonus for every mike they blow out -- they like to accelerate immediately to what would normally be the climax of a song, then crank things up another notch, and another. But behind the torrents of white noise and bloodcurdling howls, there are subtle string and horn arrangements, underscoring the power and drama of the quartet's attack; delicate melodies and twinkling chimes float out of the melee. The elegant swoop of the melody to "Baudelaire" doesn't stop them from using it as a battering ram, but even at their most savage, Trail of Dead know that the most important part of a tornado is the calm at its eye.

DOUG WOLK
(RS 891 - March 14, 2002)