...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
Worlds Apart

...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, and what kind of name is that?! (please bear with a slight smirk at my musical ignorance). A cover teeming with characters at war in medieval attire, a font style reminiscent of Iron Maiden albums (but they aren't in the metal section!) and titles that, for some reason, remind me of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (neuronal decay or rampant Alzheimer's?)...
I buy it.
I get on the subway, grab the CD player, and start listening. Umm... What is it???

The first track, acoustic, seems like a mix between Dead Can Dance and Gotica, but even more unsettling: the music stops and an eerie female voice hisses, after a chilling scream: "and you will know us by the trail of dead". Anxiety... I look at the tracklist "Ah, well... it's just an overture..."
Second song: "What the hell did I buy?!": after about two minutes of Metallica-like intro, Will You Smile For Me Again? starts. They sound like The Thrills. Worlds Apart instead recalls Mando Diao. Rest Will Follow falls into the overused "let's love each other" category. Let It Dive is stunning, and it alone is worth the entire album both for the sound (you can faintly see Interpol in the distance) and for the amazing lyrics ("There will always be something there / As long as one of us goes on living"). Once again, the music stops. A woman speaks in Russian and introduces the short piece Russia My Homeland, just over a minute long, just to remind you that the spirit of Loreena McKennitt lives. Through ups and downs we reach the last song City Of Refuge, where the band conveys the effort put into their work (I still haven't managed to listen to it all the way through: by the second minute I'm out of breath too...).

That's it, I still have to form a judgment...