Album anniversary tours are all the rage these days, everyone seems to be at it regardless of popularity and genre, with post-punk post-rockers ‘Trail of Dead’ no exception to the rule.
Longstanding core duo Jason Reece and Conrad Keely, friends since meeting in Hawaii during their teens, are celebrating twenty years since the creation of their sprawling second album ‘Madonna’, a recording opening with unsettling chanting of the band’s name before repeatedly hanging on its final word…..’Dead, Dead, Dead, Dead’ eagerly reinforced by tonight’s enthusiastic and pretty sizeable Brudenell crowd as the quartet take to the stage.
The unmistakeable riff of ‘Mistakes and Regrets’ gets proceedings underway and we’re treated to virtually the whole ‘Madonna’ album in original order, with only the two short instrumental interludes excluded. Watching Conrad and Jason regularly switching between fronting and drumming duties whilst swigging from a bottle of pinot noir, bastions of temperance Aubry Fulbright (bass) and Jamie Miller (guitar) complete the current line-up; ‘Madonna’ live proving a rawer rock and roll experience compared with the progressive leanings of its recorded cousin. Tonight’s raucously intense performance is there for all to behold, the shimmering ‘Claire de Lune’ arguably the pick of the bunch. It’s also heartening to see whole albums performed like this, everyone present choosing to enjoy the record the way it was originally intended, helping to preserve the beloved album as popular music’s premier art form in this age of streaming, playlists and single track downloads.
Moving forward three years to the band’s ‘Source Tags and Codes’ release, the mosh pit really comes to life for ‘It Was There That I Saw You’, the controlled fury of ‘Homage’ and the proggy denouement ‘Will You Smile Again For Me?'. Returning to share debut album favourite ‘Richter Scale Madness’, Trail of Dead are joined by as many audience members as the stage can accommodate, the ensuing carnage a fitting finale for a band still loving what they do best, despite the passing of time and the occasional equipment malfunction.
Words - Mike Price