Tao of the Dead

iTunes Review

Trail of Dead needed to form their own record label in order to release their own complicated music. This isn’t always easy music for radio play, but it's an elaborate, expansive exploration of genres and the band’s instrumental abilities. “Pure Radio Cosplay” and “Summer of All Dead Souls” have the hooks embedded in the band’s DNA code, with a sense of the elasticity they developed way back on Source Tags & Codes. “Fall of the Empire,” “The Wasteland” and “Spiral Jetty” follow with a sense of pastoral space travel. If horses could fly, this would be the music for them, rich as it is in taking the slower lane to the galaxy. The pauses and breaks are as intriguing as the verses and choruses. “Weight of the Sun (Or the Post-Modern Prometheus)” is more like an old drinking-at-sea song. “Ebb Away” has the histrionics of classic and arena rock in its arsenal, but Trail of Dead put them to progressive uses that climax with the mania of “The Fairlight Pendant” and the multi-parted, sixteen-and-a-half-minute “Tao of the Dead, Pt. Two: Strange News from Another Planet.”