| New
Times Los Angeles - 1998 by Eric Pederson | |
Finally,
a band with some ambition. These fresh-faced killers have the sort of cocky
swagger that Brit ass-wipes like Oasis get away with all the time, but that most
American groups are too sincere to affect. Sure, it might be more accurate to
Know Them By The Trail of CDs They Copped Stuff From--most notably, the work of
Pavement and the Sex Pistols--but the members of this Austin, Texas, foursome
(by way of Hawaii and Olympia, Washington) have worked their punchy post-punk
sound into something good enough and loud enough to call their own. Their
self-titled debut opens with their best shot, "Richter Scale Madness,"
a rowdy mess of stuttering drums, unintelligible (but catchy) group shouts, and
songwriting that basically consists of one long crescendo; lyrically, it's a
snotty ball of confusion with an all-encompassing spray of anti-social
ranting--"Dream Machine/John & Exene/Smear campaign and a S.W.A.T.
team"--is just the beginning of the list. The apparent solution (punch
line?) follows later: "This is a riot, right?/Let's all riot, riot/Let's
tear this place to shit, commit pact suicide." Elsewhere, these guys rail against rock stars and phonies and a lot of other things that are hard to make out on the handwritten lyric sheet, but most of the songs refer to a specific "you" that bugs them: "With your fake fake eyes...Are you blinded to me?" they ask on "Fake Fake Eyes" before going after "your beer-gut heart" on "Prince With a Thousand Enemies." Musically, they can lay out quiet carpets of ambience (see "Novena Without Faith"), but most songs have some variation on this basic formula: a slurring, sloppy drumbeat; grinding guitars; and flat, bratty vocals that are only intermittently understandable. That basic formula peaks on "An Ounce of Prevention," which finds the band riding a stampeding beat while swinging the catchy, stick-in-your-eye hook. It's a huge sound that works well on record but will undoubtedly be 10 times better live. And according to the band's label, the Trail of Dead has been barred from a number of Austin venues for showering audiences with spent shards of their smashed-up guitars and other such antics. Mere hyperbole like the name? Pack some protective eyewear and see you at the show. | |
