Don't you just love when the year kicks off with the release of a record you're excited about and you can't wait to finally hold in your hands? After a long and foggy November and the airport-like feeling of the time between Christmas and New Years Eve, the new record by ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead feels like a spark that ignites a fire in the night. With "X: The Godless Void And Other Stories" Conrad Keely and Jason Reece have created yet another album that shows us what's possible when musicians follow their artistic visions without compromising. Their tenth studio album is everything you could wish for and for me their best one since the paramount "Tao Of The Dead" (2011).
"The Opening Crescendo" is the trademark intro that announces the arrival of something truly special. "All Who Wander" then leads us into the unique world of the band that was founded in 1994 and has not really released any weak record since then. After "IX" in 2014, the Keely and Reece pursued other musical projects - like Keely's solo record "Original Machines" (2016). “Coming back to the band, there was a new vigor to it. It all feels exciting still", Reece says. The mixture of Indierock, Progressive and Krautrock elements and a love for haunting melodies is stunning.
"The Opening Crescendo" is the trademark intro that announces the arrival of something truly special. "All Who Wander" then leads us into the unique world of the band that was founded in 1994 and has not really released any weak record since then. After "IX" in 2014, the Keely and Reece pursued other musical projects - like Keely's solo record "Original Machines" (2016). “Coming back to the band, there was a new vigor to it. It all feels exciting still", Reece says. The mixture of Indierock, Progressive and Krautrock elements and a love for haunting melodies is stunning.
"Something Like This" ends with smooth Cello sounds while the title track is a raging song fueled by the raw energy that made early works like "Source Tags And Codes" (2002) so great. "Don't Look Down" then has a compelling goodtime vibe to it - but offers a thundering twist just when you think this could be the first simple song ...Trail Of Dead would make.
"Children of the Sky" draws upon the compositional grandeur of Keely and Reece, thus showing that the band still has new ideas that don't feel like copies of former songs.
At the same time, the band doesn't deny their past: "Gravity" nicely pays tribute to "Eight Days of Hell" from the 2006 record "So Divided".
Then "Blade of The Wind" emerges and I promise it will be stuck in your head for a long time. It's a stunning climax to a record that shows what it feels like when a band keeps on adding relevant music to their already impressing oeuvre. “I feel like I’m writing pop music,” Keely says, “it’s just not Top 20 pop. It’s the pop music I wish was on the radio, the pop music I would’ve grown up with.”
I feel you, Conrad.
I feel you, Conrad.
"X: The Godless Void And Other Stories" was released on Friday, January 17 via Inside Outmusic.