... And You Will Poll Us By The Trail Of Dead - album poll

hmm thinking of british equiv of TOD unlikely to end well, prob something like muse

like, i am trying to think of a british band doing the kind of things they do and immediately rolling my eyes

a british band that does shit like borrowing king crimson's drummer to play cambodian percussion

I feel A Sunny Day in Glasgow could've been very much like ToD, but they took a different turn

Also, My Vitriol's first album comes close in terms of intensity. Songs not as good though.

ILikeTrains comes to mind, too, but too post-rock. This is hard LJ

Who would have guessed that this band would eventually morph into The Divine Comedy. (Exhibit A: Like Summer Tempests Came His Tears.) (N.B. I am cool with this.)

there can't be a British version of this band imo because ultimately as proggy as they got they are too much a product of American post hardcore, post Fugazi underground rock, I mean they were on Trance Syndicate

Karl otm they were such an amazing band around ST&C

KM otm because the first 3 albums were when they wanted to be Sonic Youth and Unwound, after that they wanted to be way more polished and suddenly seemed like they were drawing from entirely different influences.

I'm annoyed that Lost Songs isn't on (Canadian) Spotify, thus preventing me from making a proper best-of-TOD playlist

Unwound is so underrated

there is/was plenty of uk post hardcore, post fugazi underground rock too tho

oh man i played ST&C for the first time in forever yesterday. what timing

back around that era i tried to see them every chance i could. great band

never really associated the singers with the song before, but busch has some really great ones on there!

the one time i saw them was around the ST&C-era, and it was amazing...

really great post which captures the spirit of that era. their live shows were about complete and total annihilation of their equipment and bodies. one show i saw reece broke a rib when he fell onto the audience barrier and he finished the song without even missing a beat

I hope they play TO this year, I'd love to see them live finally

They're playing My War and Relayer in their respective entireties at a fest this summer, which kinda explains their whole thing.

ahahaha oh my god

:D

you know maybe this will be the thing that makes me finally listen to black flag

enjoy side two of my war lj

ha!

Hope it gets filmed, I'd like to see if they can pull off Relayer given that there's almost always been a tention between Conrad's prog ambitions and the fact that their musicianship tends to be little above the level of competent and functional (that's not a criticism, it works for them).

I SWEAR I KNOW NOT WHY
THESE EYES HAVE ALWAYS
LEFT ME DRY

according to a locked post on Conrad's Patreon, they started mixing #10 last week.

That is great news! Has his solo album been discussed anywhere on ILM? A doozy, with mostly 2 or 3 minute songs. Would swap the whole album for three or four well-worked out and longer ToD versions of those sketches.

I had no idea it even existed until....just this second.

This reinforces the weird ToD/GbV connection.

Ha, it does!

I had no idea it existed either until I stumbled upon a deluxe LP w/ 40 pages of drawings and lyrics in a Basque record store last month. Was very surprised to see it.

That's great news about a new album, I was wiondering when they'd come out with anything again. Conrad's solo album is maybe a bit MOR but very likeable I find.

'Hills of K-Town' is a great song

Source Tags was a huge album for teenage me, and I will occasionally revisit it when I'm feeling nostalgic. I kind of fell off with them after that, and never really kept up. Prompted by this thread I'm listening to Worlds Apart now, and...IDK. Can't really get into it at all. I'm pretty sure it's Keely's voice. It feels like not the right voice for what he's trying to do at all. Does it get better later in the discography?

yeah, i'm pretty much right there with you (down to having the same initials, i think?). i loved ST&C, and a show i saw around then still ranks as one of the best shows i ever saw. they were FERAL. madonna is quite good as well. i haven't been able to get into anything since.

Almost every album after WA is superior. I'd skip straight to Tao of the Dead and see if that strikes your fancy at all.

Thanks to Simon for the good advice. Tao is leagues better. Now I'm listening to IX which is really surprisingly quite good. Also, this band is ideal for blocking out office noise.

IX is like my second favourite of their albums tbh

Lost Songs is also great and I'm annoyed it's not on Spotify

On tour again. Anyone seen them recently? Worth dropping 20 bones on?

only saw em once in 2011 to a mostly empty club, they rocked, I say go for it because you'll probably regret not going whenever they call it a day

back then it was like half new album, half old favorites, of course they closed with Richter Scale Madness... I remember Surfer Blood opened for them, and I guess most of the crowd came for them because by the time Trail of Dead came on there were maybe 40 people left. Didn't deter them at all, didn't even look pissed or disappointed, just happy to rock for whoever was left.

sold. I've wanted to catch them live since catching that "Mistakes and Regrets" performance on that show Matt Pinfield hosted (lol)

they were great on the source tags tenth anniversary tour which uh i guess we're creeping closer to the 20th

yeah this year marks the 20th of Madonna

incidentally I relistened to the s/t today and while it's badly in need of a remaster, it's still great. "Novena Without Faith" is so beautiful

Hate to say it, but they were absolutely dreadful when I saw them a month ago. I don't go to concerts a lot anymore, but I really wanted to see these guys. But It. Was. Bad. A huge disappointment. It was billed as a ToD plays Madonna/ST&C concert. They did play Madonna from start to finish, but bailed after three or four ST&C songs. Not that it mattered: they were horrible. They pulled up a wall of sound that obliterated all melody, everything that makes their songs such great songs. I know Madonna by heart so I know which song follows which song, but you couldn't make out the songs they were playing at times. Too much feedback, too much noise, a great injustice to what makes them so great.

oh no :/ hopefully they've got that sorted by May

Hope so too. You can always go and buy a nice hand-drawn Keely drawing at the merch stand, that's something.

A buddy of mine saw them a few weeks ago in Vera, Groningen and according to him they were great. Loud, but great.

That was the same show I was at :) It was loud, and terrible. The loudness obliterated what I find ToD's strength, which is melody. They did not find that balance, at all. There's no need for them to be this loud. It felt like they tried to obscure bad vocals/bad play by just blasting their songs out there. Plus: bailing three songs into ST&C - my fave ToD album - was nagl, to say the least.

Idk, ymmv, but I was bitterly disappointed by one of the bands I admire most.

They played well in TO last night - their drummer in particular is great - but the mixing and tone was absurd. Specifically, their lead guitarist was so amped up (both in terms of amplitude and maxing out distortion) that it drowned out everything but those drums! Conrad was literally inaudible. Completely baffling choices. The set was Madonna plus a couple Source Tags tunes, though it took me a full 45-60 seconds each to figure out what those were due to the sound.

This was nice to see, incl some great trivia I hadn't previously heard.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/and-you-will-know-us-by-the-trail-of-madonna/

never got why people think that's the classic, including the band itself seemingly, they got much better later on