...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. C/D?

what exactly is embarrassing on Worlds Apart? i don't think there's a weak song on there. the backlash was just ridiculous, like "Hey, ROCK BAND, STAY IN YOUR PLACE." there's just as much bombast as The Smashing Pumpkins, which were criminally uncool for years but are only starting to get begrudging p4k acceptance.

eh i just mean its bombast is occasionally carelessly deployed, plus the lyrics are often terrible in a really cynical and self-serious way (title track)

don't get me wrong i looooved that record in high school and still have a lot of affection for it.

the new record is GREAT btw

Unobtrusive album track 'Luna Park' for instance must be one of the greatest non-regular-songwriter tracks I've ever heard (up there with, say, Desire Lines by Deerhunter) - so much so I wonder why they don't let that guy write more stuff

jason reece? i mean he only has a few songs per record but i'd argue they're usually the best there. especially on the new one ("lie without a liar," "lost in the grand scheme")

Worlds Apart has Caterwaul, which I think is a Jason Reece song, and also one of the beat TOD songs. During one performance in Vera (2005 I believe) it was Jason who sung/screamed it in the audience, ending in a mass singalong. It was awesome.

beat = best

"caterwaul" was an encore for the source tags & codes show i saw and everyone went crazyyyy

it was surprisingly the emotional apex of the show

one thing tht was cool about ST&C was that you had not only Keely and Reece but also Neil Busch ("Baudelaire," "Monsoon"), whose songs and voice were totally distinct. Wish they coulda kept him around.

and yeah "Lie Without a Liar" is one of their new best ever, immense song

i love the song worlds apart. the HEY FUCK YOU MAN! at the beginning mixed really loud, "look at those cunts on mtv," references to the twin towers... im pretty sure hes taking the piss

lol i'm listening to tao of the dead for the first time and the best two songs on here are jason reece too ("weight of the son," "ebb away")

meanwhile tao of the dead fucking rules

Always appreciated the relative bluntness of the alt-nihilism in stuff like "worlds apart" and "let it die" - though when the 'fork is already having raver's remorse that kind of directness can be used against you (see Travistan)

it actually warms my heart to see ilm talking kindly about trail of dead right now, awwww you guys... 🐱

I haven't heard any of the albums after Century Of Self, but now I feel like I should check those.

This was one of my favorite songs for a very long time. Nothing after this EP really stuck with me, though I haven't listened to recent records closely. It seemed like after this EP they suddenly were trying too hard to be "epic" or "deep" or angsty. Overall they came off much much less mature sounding to me from then on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYMY4Ak24JM

The recent albums are vv different from the mid-period stuff, somehow both proggier and much more disciplined

not to mention way less vocal/lyric-driven than before, a good move imo

Yeah I'm going to check out the most recent again for sure.

their cover art is totally hilarious

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61jr9gk8r1L.jpg

It looks like the cover art of a bad steam-punk themed RPG for Dreamcast.

a new 12-book fantasy sci-fi series for middle-grades readers

Yeah I can't defend that cover. The album's really good though.

What's to defend? As gt says, it's hilarious.

Re: Crowning of a Heart - not to be that guy, but I like the demo better:

https://youtu.be/OWNh1LOUxx8

Oh that's great! I didn't know it existed. At first it sounded a bit too shy, but once it started picking up I realized why it can be preferable.

um

the new album is *fucking amazing*

first half of it at least

anticipating some sort of extra-ludicrous blowout format for album 10

I like hearing this band's name to the melody of the first line of the verse of Head Over Heels by Tears for Fears

do these guys still smash all their equipment at the end of every show?

yep, the new album still rules

i even like the second half now

Saw them perform for the first time yesterday, even though I've been listening to them since the early 00's. Fantastic show, they seemed to be having a really good time, too. Lots of personal favourites were played:

The Opening Crescendo
All Who Wander
It Was There That I Saw You
Into the Godless Void
Isis Unveiled
Don't Look Down
Children of the Sky
How Near How Far
Bells of Creation
Let It Dive
Worlds Apart
Weight of the Sun (Or the Post-Modern Prometheus)
Ebb Away
Homage
Clair de Lune
Caterwaul
Will You Smile Again?
Relative Ways
Mistakes & Regrets
Another Morning Stoner

They came back for an encore, think it was a song from the last album (possibly "Blade of Wind").

The sound was good? I saw them on the Madonna anniversary tour and the mix was atrocious, but I'd love to give them another crack live.

Yeah I heard about sound issues during last year's ST&C "jubilee" tour. Yesterday's sound/mix was great - I even thought the volume could've been cranked up a bit but that was easily solved by getting closer to the stage. I'd say give it a go if you get the chance!

They broke up?

Conrad Keely announced via an Instagram post in March 2023 that "the Trail is closed", and later clarified that the band had no plans to either tour nor make any more music in the traditional sense, citing a disastrous final tour, exhaustion, and the inhospitable state of the music industry towards smaller bands as the main drivers behind their decision.[2]

Their last tour does sound like a nightmare: https://www.patreon.com/posts/73901821

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Works for me in chrome on desktop and phone?

Are all the trail of dead fans on holiday? I'm going through their whole catalogue (albums anyway), two to go. Do they have a bad album? No. Do they have a nadir? Absolutely not, fuck you pitchfork. Do they have a bad song? I'm not sure that they do. Astonishing band, incredible body of work. Why didn't I try and see them live? (I did once, at an ATP, I don't think I saw a proper tour, lol my memory). RIP.

OK yeah it was just my phone at the time.

I've listened to XI half a dozen times over the last few days, it's absolutely one of their best. As grandiose and prog as anything they've done but not unleavened with humour (fuck the potatoes!), a dash of punk, a flirting with psych / krautrock. 22 songs, impeccably sequenced, no duds, nothing superfluous.

That ATP show was pretty amazing all told, I only saw them a couple of times outside that including a really early show (I think the s/t had just come out, or was about to) where they were pretending to trash their kit at the end of the set and a guy got up on stage and actually did push all the amps over, which led to a giant fist fight between the band, their roadies, and some of the crowd.

lolll i saw them in new york once where they “trashed” their gear and i remember thinking that i would know them by the trail of unimpressed roadies

I've been a fan the whole ride, really bummed if this is truly it for them but that tour does sound rough. The only time I caught the, live was at Lollapalooza one year when they played early in the day's blistering heat but they still put on a killer set.

i was technically brother-in-law to their touring guitar tech for a while and he had some wild war stories from the road. this was back in the late 2000s-early 2010s.

one for the "when you like the wrong album" thread: i will always have a soft spot for the worlds apart and so divided material. even though i don't know the whole catalogue that well, i have to agree with ledge in that i've always been impressed by their consistency. crazy the amount of hype they had at one point.