At last year's Summersonic festival, Texas four-piece . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead gave us the best, and most incendiary, live performance Japan saw all year. They ended a phenomenal show by trashing every piece of equipment on stage -- even the drum kit was hurled into the mosh pit as panicked Japanese security guards cowered in the wings of the stage, too petrified to intervene. It was worth the admission price alone.
Trail of Dead's third album, "Source Tags & Codes," is an epic declaration of war on rock music, making any kind of band specializing in noise (hard rock, punk, metal, whatever) that you've heard in the last 12 months seem completely irrelevant. It's 46 minutes of aural and lyrical blood-letting.
The Pixies-like bombast of "Homage" is the most vicious-sounding three minutes in years and makes you want to go out and rip the head off the first Blink-182 fan you come across. It ends with the sound of a snarling electrical fire, as if the song's sheer intensity left the recording studio a smoking ruin.