It's probably safe to say that if Queens of the Stone Age hadn't postponed their show, the Trail of Dead's Saturday night would have been completely different. For starters, there wouldn't have been as much stage diving. Momentarily gig-less for the evening, the unruly Austin foursome dragged themselves and their gear to the Khyber for a surprise show at a much tinier venue than the Electric Factory where they were slated to open for Queens.

During the set's first half, the band diligently worked through selections from leading album-of-the-year contender Source Tags & Codes with little incident. Although drummer-guitarist-singer Jason Reece pulled of a little dive during the wild "Homage," the band mostly stayed onstage and the crowd stayed on the floor as their frantic energy bubbled away. But somewhere around "Totally Natural" from their '99 record Madonna, things came to a boil. Reece told the audience, "We want to have a dance party, so you need to come up here!"

The other drummer-guitarist-singer Conrad Keely (T.O.D.'s inter-changability is nothing short of astonishing) retorted "You're crazy, man!" but still helped pull a dozen or so people up for "the Texas two-step." The so-called dance more or less consisted of moshing and stage diving while knocking over as much gear as you can; one fellow in the melee was applauded by Keely for sporting a "Don't Mess with Texas" T-shirt.

A Khyber bouncer quickly helped get things back under semi-control while a pair of chain-smoking roadies reassembled the drum kit and microphone stands, but chaos reigned for the rest of the set. Band members and their instruments took frequent leaps off the riser, and during the closing "A Perfect Teenhood," singer/bassist Neil Busch jabbed his axe upward, bringing four or five large ceiling panels crashing down in a dusty mess. Such destruction wouldn't have been possible at the Factory for certain, but we'll see what kind of havoc breaks out when Trail of Dead opens for the rescheduled Queens date next weekend.