- Record Label: Interscope
- Release Date: Jan 25, 2005
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Combining brute force with melody, Worlds Apart is a stunning showcase for AYWKUBTTOD's mature sound, full of unexpected subtleties, musical wild-cards and detours.
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FilterThis is the best album Trail of Dead has ever made. [#13, p.94]
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Entertainment WeeklyTheir punk and indie roots are still very much in evidence... But the separation-of-instruments clarity and punchier dynamics that propel each song owe more to the Who. [28 Jan 2005, p.81]
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It's killer stuff for any frame of mind.
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Trail of Dead has made the album of its career.
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Q MagazineTheir most coherent statement yet. [Feb 2005, p.100]
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Los Angeles TimesEven Trail of Dead's slightest moments speak with the purpose and ambition of genuine rock 'n' roll intellect and desire. [6 Feb 2005]
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Simply put, 'Worlds Apart' is a delicately violent piece of art.
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But even when ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead slips, it's in the service of exploration. With Worlds Apart, the band takes a confident, blind leap toward a potentially confounding future, and lands solidly and triumphantly.
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Worlds Apart is easily the most accessible album for the band.
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A frequently astonishing album that combines bruising rock and limp-wristed flourish in almost equal measure.
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SpinBetween these boy-noise roils you can see how much the band want to be their generation's Yes. [Feb 2005, p.87]
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Under The RadarThe band's musical scope has significantly expanded in World's Apart, and for the better. [#8, p.105]
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So they missed the bullseye. But that's no reason to yell "sell out!", or to deride them as poseurs.
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Rolling StoneA heroic monster of an album. [27 Jan 2005, p.58]
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Worlds Apart might be a noble failure, but it would probably be worse if it just revisited previous successes.
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Review #1: As pandering as the lyrics may be, they could be forgiven if the songs still brought the rock, and they don’t. [score=35]; Review #2: Worlds Apart is stunning. [score=95]
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Alternative PressThe least pretentious--and most accessible--thing AYWKUBTTOD have ever released. That's probably because it sounds a lot like your record collection. [Feb 2005, p.92]
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UncutNo less viscerally thrilling [than its predecessor] but pursues a number of ear-bogglingly unlikely paths. [Feb 2005, p.73]
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All these flowery production choices can at times be quite seductive, despite the glaring mishandling of the vocals astride them.
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All in all it's not the noise rush we were craving - and no, it's not as good as Source Tags - but did anyone really think it could be?
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Worlds Apart is the first TOD album that sounds like it was influenced by a marketing department.
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BlenderUnexpectedly clean-cut... the time-signature shifts and feedback swirls that earned them minor adulation are sidelined in favor of pushy, arena-sized choruses. [Mar 2005, p.136]
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MojoFor all that bombast, though, there's a disappointing, un-Texan restraint. [Feb 2005, p.94]
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The fact that it hides among its excesses a handful of truly excellent rock anthems seems almost like an afterthought, as if, when the band ran out of crazy ideas, they found that there was nothing left to do but write actual songs.
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It's all so precious; let's hope they still break shit live.
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One of the most cluttered, awkward, and unfocused albums in recent memory.
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It’s the tracks that sit closest to the old Trail of Dead that make up a majority of Worlds Apart’s uninspiring moments and also ruin any cohesion that could have otherwise been attained through the heart of the album.
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On Worlds Apart Trail of Dead sounds utterly reinvigorated yet dangerously reinvented.
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Worlds Apart is an aspiration, an apology, the sound of confusion.
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New Musical Express (NME)'Worlds Apart' reads like a suicide note of a band that's tried to intellectualise its place in the canon of Western music and, in doing so, recognised its own irrelevance. [22 Jan 2005, p.51]
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A bloated misfire.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 63 out of 80
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Mixed: 10 out of 80
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Negative: 7 out of 80
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Feb 2, 2011
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Oct 19, 2010
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CaseyPApr 7, 2009