- Record Label: Superball Music
- Release Date: Feb 8, 2011
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Feb 8, 2011A genre defining release and a welcome return to boundary surfing music.
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Feb 10, 2011While several tracks would sit comfortably on a Best Of ...Trail Of Dead playlist Tao Of The Dead certainly feels like their most consistent collection in years.
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Feb 14, 2011While they did gain immediacy and a hint of their earlier punk energy, this is still some of the most densely constructed art-rock you're likely to hear all year, which only makes the quick process even more impressive.
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Alternative PressFeb 23, 2011Meticulously orchestrated by frontman Conrad Keely, Tao Of The Dead hits a full-on prog rock pose with seemless transitions, classical movement structures and lunar background flourishes scraping the Dark Side Of The Moon. [Mar 2011, p.92]
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Kerrang!Feb 18, 2011This infusion of punk is quite some achievement given the album is divided into movements, yet in stripping back to a four-piece they strip away pretentiousness and inject rough-hewn power. [5 Feb 2011, p.51]
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Feb 11, 2011Maybe the reason Tao of the Dead works so well is that the band has discovered a way to inject some much needed fun into prog rock.
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Feb 8, 2011This is another fascinating and unfashionable album from a band unwilling to cater to anyone's expectations except their own, and thriving because of it.
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Feb 7, 2011Tao of the Dead finally channel their indulgences, creating a heroic symphony that sounds wholly constructed.
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Feb 3, 2011The conclusion, then, is clear: both as a standalone record and part of …Trail of Dead's considerable canon, Tao of the Dead will be remembered as a high point.
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Feb 8, 2011At last, the band sounds breathless and unbound again, and as punk-prog as it wants to be.
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Feb 11, 2011Set your controls for the heart of your bong.
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Apr 8, 2011Sounding as vital as they ever have seven LPs down the track, there's life in them yet.
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Feb 8, 2011Keely has stated in interviews that it's this kind of record that he grew up listening to and wanted to emulate, and maybe that's why Tao of the Dead ends up being the most focused Trail of Dead effort in years rather than a space-rock sham.
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Feb 8, 2011There's plenty more on Tao of the Dead that works. After years out in the cold as music critic whipping posts, this should go a long way toward reclaiming some lost luster for Trail of Dead.
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Feb 8, 2011The band's typically thunderous melodic sprawl and cryptic musings on life and death perfectly fit the conceptual bill, with everything cranked to its natural extreme.
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Feb 7, 2011It's important to have moments like this in a concept album that's meant to be taken as one massive 52-minute expression; doing so gives the listener a break and focuses on momentary satisfactions in order to properly digest this cornucopia of solid rock goodness.
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Feb 7, 2011Making no egregious concessions to potential new fans, nor to the musical trends of the past decade, Trail of Dead finally sound like a band emerging from a purgatorial state, out from underneath the shadows of their former selves.
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Feb 3, 2011The locals' penchant for grandiose concepts and elongated immolation remains, but part one of Tao avoids letting the song cycle run away with the songs.
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UncutApr 12, 2011Despite the epic pretensions of the 16-miniute finale, "Tao Of The Dead Part Two,", sadly, this sort of tribute to rock's historical hinterlands yields fewer surprises each time. [May 2011, p.77]
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MojoApr 6, 2011Album seven hits a sweet spot between prog and power-chords. [March 2011, p. 108]
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Mar 23, 2011Tao of the Dead makes me, by turns, want to improve my attention span and want to listen to something else.
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Mar 14, 2011Their decision to fuse the songs with a series of spaced-out instrumental passages is indulgent, to be sure, but the album's breathless, genre-spanning ambition makes it easy to forgive.
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Feb 14, 2011Mixed so its songs blend together, Tao is such a cohesive record that when the second track, Pure Radio Cosplay, is reprised midway through, it seems like the end of an intense musical detour rather than a simple replaying of the song.
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Feb 15, 2011It sounds reaching, like the band is lost and looking desperately for an audience and a voice. I hope they start looking somewhere else.
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Mar 14, 2011While bombastic and ambitious as ever, Tao suggests that Trail of Dead have once again lost the taste for subtlety and texture that's past served to elevate their sound from the prog pack.
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Feb 3, 2011I can't imagine why anyone would want to hear another half-hour of this crap, but if you've got brain cells to spare after Tao of the Dead's wonky, caterwauling sendoff, then by all means, put on your +2 Boots of Moshing and get to it!
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 15 out of 18
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Mixed: 1 out of 18
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Negative: 2 out of 18
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Feb 8, 2011
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Jun 17, 2011
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Feb 13, 2011