City Newspaper Archives - 1/2007

And You Will Know Us by the Trail of the Dead: "So Divided"

Published by Joel Chaffee on Jan 16, 2007
There are moments in ...Trail of the Dead's fifth album, So Divided, wherein a cringe does not seem unwarranted. Moments that make us glad to be listening alone.

Yet if we welcome So Divided we will revel in its intensity, loud with defiance like only this band can be loud. We will be engaged, escorted into anthems hoping to stir us. We can play the sucker for the soft, brief calm of piano or accordion and play it again for the stomping glory of the band.

So Divided suffers its missteps, but at stretches achieves the grandeur it hopes to. "Eight Days of Hell" is a battle hymn marching through midnight. "Naked Sun" is dirty pool hall rock but, with its fluttering keyboards, also mystical.

As the title suggests, the album is fragmentary; it forgets where it came from. But it sometimes knows where it's going, and then the sheen will give way and make the anthems grander. And then, how does it go? "I fall to pieces..."