Album Review: …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – X: The Godless Void And Other Stories
Texas alt.rock legends …Trail Of Dead return, as spiky and brilliant as ever
Five years living in Cambodia, able to keep to himself during …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead downtime between tours, have clearly proved restorative for bandleader Conrad Keely. To this end, the Texan group’s tenth studio album burns with an intensity equal to that displayed on second album Madonna, a landmark in late ’90s alt.rock.
Conrad and fellow founding member Jason Reece cite Talk Talk and Killing Joke as inspirations here, references which devotees will recognise in the apocalypse-embracing Into The Godless Void and the bleakly beautiful Gone, with its minor key piano intro building into a maelstrom of tangled, layered guitars and distorted synths. But there’s sunshine streaking through the doom, too, with the twinkling Don’t Look Down showcasing their melodic nous.
Once upon a time, alongside the likes of At The Drive-In and The Icarus Line, …Trail Of Dead were tipped as the future of rock. In 2020, long unburdened of such expectations, the Texans still sound like a band capable of stealing hearts forever.
Verdict: 4/5