. And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead aren’t rock `n’ rollers, they’re scientists! The four members of And You Will Know Us met in their hometown of Planoe (not Plano), Texas, where they sang together in the church choir.
The band itself grew out of their obsession in anthropology while in college at University of Texas-Austin.
Even the name comes from a particular Mayan myth that has been found in other ancient cultures throughout the world. The idea of the group was to construct a unifying expression that has roots in many ancient societies.
Ironically, this expression sounds a lot like alt-rock.
Their latest album, Source Tags and Codes, is an interesting look at this “experiment.” It is powerful while at the same time melodic and intricate. There are yells. There are whispers. There are thrash metal parts. There are new-wave pop parts.
Even with such contrasts, the album seems complete and whole-like a journey into a foreign land.
The song “Heart in the Hand of the Matter” is a good example of this dichotomy.
It opens with up-tempo guitar riffs that could have been on the out-takes of a Strokes song, only to burst into a melee of heavy distortion before the vocalist erupts in a scream.
This continues for about a minute, until the guitars quiet again into a goth-rock riff as the screams become spoken words.
It reminded me of something the early Cure would do. Just as this was setting in, the distortion erupted again, and the thrash was back on. And this was all in the course of four minutes! Yet, it worked perfectly, which is why this is such an interesting band.
Surrounding this sound rampage are lyrics straight out of an Edgar Allen Poe nightmare. In the song “Days of Being Wild,” the vocalist sings, “All sewn up/ Pull out the seams/ Your voice is static/ Far from my reach/ I burn the page/ Images are blurred/ Am I afraid.” I really don’t know what this means, but it sure sounds intense.
The problem is that these lyrics are often screamed rather than sung, which make it hard to really comprehend what the guy is saying (I had to look at the liner notes for these lyrics).
Apparently, this is a concept album about “the loss of agrarian innocence in a world preoccupied with numbers and record-keeping,” or so says their bio page. I did not pick this up in the least, but that really doesn’t matter in the scheme of things. This is an album that is more about the melodic and thematic shifts than the far-out lyrics.
These guys are definitely worth a listen, if only to test your idea of what music is. In trying to make a universal sound, these guys got as close as any band that has ever tried.
Grade: B
