What stands out on The Century of Self is a sense of confidence in what Trail of Dead have become-- though they're still sorting out their big-top ambitions a bit too prog for radio airplay (but not too prog to necessarily discourage it), gone are the overbearing orchestrations and baffling genre experiments that often served as cloaking devices for either weak songs or a dearth of ideas.
I was about ready to give The Century of Self, the first record that I had heard from ... And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, a very high rating, but the album started to lose me after track 8, Luna Park. I thought the first half of the record perfectly blended accessible melodies within a progressive rock framework, but - and this is all subjective obviously - but I didn't care for the melodies on the song Insatiable (One) and Insatiable (Two). I really disliked the singsong, warbling ... read more