Happy Trails of Dead to You!

Titling a band is a tremendous responsibility. The crowning of your album, the encapsulation and explanation of every mean riff must be well represented by your bitchin’ nomenclature. It’s got to be a name that sticks. It’s got to be a name that represents you. It’s got to be a name that betrays you to your genre, assuming, in these eclectic times you’ve chosen one. And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is a band who, quite progressively, has forgone this notion, opting for a short novel rather than a title. How emo.
Source Tags and Codes, their Interscope realease for 2002 is a passionate, emotive collection of tracks that would only disappoint the mullet-sporting metal thrasher who mistakenly picked up their album based on the band name alone. An extremely musical and at times most danceable record, Source Tags and Codes keeps a consistant, raucous pace from track to intelligent track. And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead reeks of influence by Emo soldiers such as Sunny Day Real Estate, trip rock influences such as more recent Radiohead, and slightly reminisces such good honest rock as Stone Temple Pilots in their prime. Source Codes and Tags is truly a rock album contrived with an obvious knowledge of music and orchestration, and written with the prowess of a natural wordsmith. Though not the album you expected from the title and band name, which at present I am far to exhausted to go through again (please see above, as there is no way you remember it since first reading it anyhow) said band will prove to be a real force in today’s pop-punk dominated rock arena, assuming they can endure abbreviation for the rest of their careers.