Album Review: ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - The Century Of Self
- Written by Joseph Rowan
It's been a rough few years for ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. Since the acclaimed Source Tags and Code, recipient of a perfect ten on Pitchfork, they have lost original bassist Neil Busch, suffered many more lineup changes and have left their label Interscope.On top of this both the excellent Worlds Apart and its hurried follow-up So Divided were not terribly well received critically, only deservedly so in the latter's case. The position many fans took was that the next album, their sixth, was to be the album that decided the rest of the band's future. If it was good they would continue to support them and if the downward trend continued, they would finally give up on them.
It goes downhill from there, though. 'Halcyon Days' is the first weak track of the album; although it is roughly the same length as 'Isis Unveiled', six-and-a-half minutes, it feels much longer as it struggles to find a memorable hook.
As the rest of the album unfolds its flaws become more and more apparent. Listening to it brings back memories of listening to British Sea Power's Do You Like Rock Music? In both cases the bands appeared to try and create a big, "epic" sound by turning everything up to maximum. The Century of Self is a similarly exhausting listen, as guitars, multi-part vocals, pianos, percussion and god-knows what else assault you throughout every track. As the album progresses each song, though individually very listenable, tends to get lost in the generic, over-produced noise. Trail of Dead's biggest strength used to be knowing when to let the melody take the forefront, and when to let rip with the noise. On The Century of Self they seem to have thrown melody and chaos in together, meaning the former is often subsumed into the latter, which is rendered less effective as a result.
Unsurprisingly, it's quite difficult to pick out highlights from the rest of the album. The other two Festival Thyme tracks, 'Bells of Creation' and 'Inland Sea', manage to sound epic, without appearing pompous, a balancing act heard best on Worlds Apart. Likewise the slower, more piano driven tracks 'Luna Park' and the two parts of 'Insatiable' stand out, although this might be due to the desperately needed change of pace and production as much as anything. But too many of the other tracks feel busy and unfocused and some potentially great ideas are sadly put to waste.
This isn't to say that The Century of Self is a bad album, per se, more that it's a disappointingly middling album, with fewer really great tracks than it deserves to have. It seems that Trail of Dead fans will have to wait until album number seven to see what the future of this once amazing band holds.