… And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead – So Divided

… And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead‘s last album, Worlds Apart, pretty much slipped under my radar. Other than a select few tracks, I found it pretty boring and monotone, I just couldn’t get into it. Now, with their follow up, So Divided, I can’t help but feel that they’ve maintained the same appeal but have been able to improve quite a lot as well.

Like it’s predecessor, So Divided starts off with a solid introduction that leads into the album nicely as it starts off almost completely silent and slowly builds up as more voices and conversations come into the mix until it erupts in anticipation and Trail jumps into their first proper song of the album, Stand In Silence which builds of the energy of the introduction perfectly. The song s harder and louder than most Trailsongs and reminded me a lot of Worlds Apart from the last album. So far, the album was sounding great, and I started thing that my doubts were misplaced. Sadly, throughout the rest of the album my opinion on the album continually swapped sides.

The album seems to fluctuate constantly. There would be a great song, then a good one, another good one, a very bland one, and then a good one and a few more bland ones. While there’s never a truly horrible track, at times it seems to truly lack a much needed consistency. There does tend to be more enjoyable tracks than passable ones, even the enjoyable ones can begin to drag after a while.

There still seems to be something very distinctive about their sound that keeps me coming back to So Divided though. The songs are always built on a very basic structure with a constant melody and are normally led by the vocals. And despite it being so bare, the tracks often seem grandiose. This gives it a wonderful effect of spaciousness and all consuming power, but at the same time can backfire because it is just too far fetched. More often then not the songs are built off of the same line of lyrics being repeated numerous times, over and over again until it gets permanently slammed into your memory banks. Once again this effect makes the song seem more spacious somehow, particularly on Wasted State Of Mind and Cold Hard Mountain Top Queen Directory (the two highlights of the album).

After all of this, I’m still completely torn on this album and Trail of The Dead. It’s good, they are incredible musicians and there are some very entertaining cuts on the album; but at the same time the album drags on too long. It fluctuates and rarely maintains a solid flow, and while you can listen to it numerous times in a row, at the end of the day there isn’t enough substance to keep you coming back to it.