...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead -
Tao of The Dead


(CD 2011, 52:16, Superball Music)

The tracks:
  1- Introduction: Let's Experiment(2:24)
  2- Pure Radio Cosplay(5:26)
  3- Summer Of All Dead Souls(4:17)
  4- Cover The Days Like A Tidal Wave(2:51)
  5- Fall Of The Empire(2:28)
  6- The Wasteland(2:33)
  7- Spiral Jetty(1:48)
  8- Weight Of The Sun(2:19)
  9- Pure Radio Cosplay (Reprise)(3:18)
10- Ebb Away(2:41)
11- The Fairlight Pendant(5:44)
12- Tao Of The Dead Part Two:
           Strange News From Another Planet
(16:32)

Trail Of Dead Website        Superball Music

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead (TOD) was formed in 1994 by singers, guitar players and drummers Conrad Keely and Jason Reece. Nowadays, the band are still creatively driven by these two founding members. Their first record was an eponymous one that was released in 1998. The past two years have seen TOD flourish with the return to their indie roots. Their previous album The Century Of Self (2009) was amazing and filled with very demanding progressive rock that earned them raves in the press all over the world.

In the spring of 2010 TOD entered a worldwide deal with Superball Music. Tao Of The Dead is their seventh album and the debut for Superball. It's a real psychedelic musical trip; the band play faithful homages to Pink Floyd, Rush, Steppenwolf and Neu. The CD actually consists of two parts. Part 1 being the first eleven shorter songs and part 2 being the final epic piece Tao Of The Dead, part 2: Strange News From Another Planet. This is a song that lasts over sixteen minutes; it's the absolute gem on this album. The material on Tao Of The Dead is definitely more symphonic as the amount of keyboard passages has grown a lot since their previous album. This makes the album more diverse but also less intense, at least in my opinion.

However, I think this is TOD's best album so far also due to the fact that the band - to retrace their musical steps - enlisted long time friend Chris Smith, who was the producer of the band's debut album, to find that blistering sound from twelve years ago. TOD also experiment with indie producer Chris Coady on the epic track that makes this album not to be missed! I already loved their previous album, but this is a true masterpiece!

**** Martien Koolen (edited by Peter Willemsen)

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