Viva La Vinyl

… And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Worlds Apart

Hopefully the demise of this band has been greatly exaggerated, because everything I’ve heard from this band is extremely my shit. And while I’m no expert¹, I have been listening to them since 2009. However, with how much of a shit show their last tour was, I can’t blame them for throwing in the towel. Glad I got to see them live in 2021, though.

This was one of those bands that I had avoided because the name sounded like they’re a super hardcore death metal band. It’s also kind of twee in how extra it is. But by the time Century Of Self came out, I had been exploring the waters of metal with Mastodon, Baroness, and Red Fang, so I think that any trepidation that the name instilled in me had washed away.

The friend that got me into Mastodon was a coworker at the often mentioned Bookstore, Jon. The band he was in at the time, A Moment’s Loss, had a similar vibe to Trail Of Dead — epic prog emo is the best I can come up with. Several different parts of songs that didn’t sound like random riffs thrown together because they couldn’t figure out what to do with them².

Trail Of Dead’s mastermind, Conrad Keely, is an awesome artist, and he provides all the illustrations for their albums. Getting to see everything in a large record insert format does it a lot more justice than CD booklets.

Anyway, I think I’m going to pop a couple of their records on my turntable that I haven’t listened to yet…

-bcp

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - World’s Apart (Apple Music)

1. I’ll wait to bestow that moniker upon myself until I get on a Deprogrammed episode about them.

2. I’m looking at you, “Whoever Said”.