And You Will Know Us By The

With a name like …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, chaos and carnage is all but guaranteed.

And certainly in their early years, the Austin band—formed in 1994 by rotating singers/guitarists/drummers Conrad Keely and Jason Reece—were all too happy to provide it, often pushing their frenzied post-hardcore blitzes to instrument-smashing extremes.

But on albums like 1999’s Madonna and 2002’s Source Tags & Codes, that apocalyptic noise was balanced by a prog-schooled grandeur, coming off like Sonic Youth trying to cover Pink Floyd’s The Wall.