...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead

With a name like …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, chaos and carnage is all but guaranteed. And certainly in their early years, the Austin band—formed in 1994 by rotating singers/guitarists/drummers Conrad Keely and Jason Reece—were all too happy to provide it, often pushing their frenzied post-hardcore blitzes to instrument-smashing extremes. But on albums like 1999’s Madonna and 2002’s Source Tags & Codes, that apocalyptic noise was balanced by a prog-schooled grandeur, coming off like Sonic Youth trying to cover Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Through a history that’s seen them bound between Merge Records, Interscope, and their own DIY imprint (with a fluctuating lineup that periodically balloons to six members), Keely and Reece have maintained their tug-of-war between elegance and aggression, at times leaning hard into operatic indulgence (2006’s So Divided) while occasionally reverting to their punk roots (2012’s Lost Songs). Their masterfully melodic 2022 double album, XI: BLEED HERE NOW, further testifies to their enduring adaptability and vitality: Once the purveyors of crash-and-burn spectacle, Trail of Dead have acquired all the quiet confidence of a band that know they need not trash their backline to make an everlasting impression.