Almost three decades and an eleventh album for the duet passed sextet with interchangeable members. Thirty years or so of noises, fury, melodies and harmonies but also and above all of experimentations, challenges and music with no precise genre other than itself. "XI: Bleed Here Now" is no exception to the band's induced rule.
What differs here is the "how" as the songs were born on a farm where the musicians found themselves after stopping everything due to a global pandemic. A revelation for songwriter Conrad Keely who was able, for the very first time, to sit back and breathe, read, listen to the world and decide at his own pace what future he wanted to forge with Trail Of Dead.
The result: a fruitful and relaxed work session, between frisbee, barbecue and walls of electric organ, giving birth to an initiatory course of 21 tracks where interludes and ambiences paint sonorous dreams ('Pigments', 'A Life Less Melancholy') before embarking on the tortuous rapids of the bubbling waters of inspiration (the titanic 11 minutes of 'Taken By The Hand').
The islands covered raise the colors of Black Sabbath, the Foo Fighters, the Beatles or Yes, letting the sounds speak for themselves to remind us how much the music created by human beings brings closer those who make it to those who listen to it. The labyrinthine shouts and improvisations of 'Golden Sail' are proof of this, as is the use of quadraphonic sound, the record becoming one of the few to go full surround since the system was created in the 1960s.