Somehow we all blinked sometime around the year 2000, and Austin, Texas made its first steps toward ruling the world by the time the half millisecond was over. Anyone in the know was telling you about all the awesome things happening down in the creative heart of the Lone Star state. Comparable to the burgeoning grunge scene in the Pacific Northwest in the early '90s, Austin's premiere bands are continually scraping towards mainstream success, albeit at a snail's pace, while baffling mainstream media in the process.
Anyone monitoring the trials of ...And You Shall Know Us By the Trail of Dead doesn't need to be reminded of any of this. They've witnessed their band bounce from one distinction to the next, on their way to wider appeal. When the band first began garnering national attention, it was thought to be the heir apparent to the melodic rockers Sonic Youth. Further down the line, the cutlines described them as the violent oddity that was famous for wrecking venues and wreaking havoc. The following year the album "Source Tags and Codes" made them indie rock savants, but perhaps even harder to classify than before. A recent appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman" under their belts for the new album "Worlds Apart" is only making it more obvious that a ticket for Trail of Dead is just going to get harder to come by in the coming months.
Even after Letterman, there's still the matter of trying to figure out just who these guys are, and what's getting them this far. As headliners Thursday night at the Black Cat, Trail of Dead brought fellow Austin natives the Sword and the Octopus Project with them, two groups whose separate strengths mirrored their collective sound.
Arriving under the generally creatively empty banner of post-hardcore music, the Sword didn't do much to shake that image as the opening band. Taking forever to get to the actual point of each song, four chords dominated their set with a dictatorial fist. Some of the faster and more coherent punk rock undertones of the largely heavy metal players emerged late in their set.
The Octopus Project needs to make it big or go down trying because there's no tidy way to classify what they do. It's too much like Devo/Television-era rock and roll to take off with the drum and bass club kids, and hipster rock mavens will smile and say, "that was pretty cool," forgetting about them just as quickly for not having any overt philosophy or lyrics.
Going hard and fast with two drum sets, the players of Trail of Dead alternate guitars, drum responsibilities and transitions with seasoned precision and boundless energy. As in their records, the music is static to the point of being unflinching. Yet it rises impeccably, getting higher and more frantic while remaining unpredictable and free of any specific archetype. Lead vocalist/rhythm guitar player and sometimes drummer Conrad Keely has vocals that try to rise above the heavy drum line resembling a drowning man's last breaths. Keely's guitar work is coupled with lead guitarist Kevin Allen's casual demeanor, both providing great intensity while making variation a staple of Trail of Dead's repertoire. Decked in black, James Reece was the hardcore rock Mr. Hyde to Keely's light indie Dr. Jekyll, playing the exact same instruments as Keely interchangeably. His darker vocals and angrier drum work eventually would boil over into the destruction of one of the drum sets before it was anticlimatically reset for an encore round.
During the last song of the encore, Trail of Dead recaptured their recently departed youth, playing a song from their first EP while fans flooded the stage by the bucket full. As Black Cat personnel scrambled to make sure their club wasn't hurt to the point of surgical repair, a part of the mystery behind Trail of Dead's true persona leaks through. They are, in essence, unafraid of many things. With an unorthodox name, spotty and exaggerated tails of destruction, as well as countless different stories of their musical core circulating, they simply are content to be who they've always been and continually modifying what they love about music to keep that love palpable and enduring. It's not the whole truth, but unless you count yourself as a member, good luck getting to any larger concept of it
