AUSTIN RED EYED FLY Live Review [March 2001]

When Trail Of Dead failed to combust onstage at last months NME Carling Awards Shows, there was disappointment from hype-believers who expect the Texas foursome to embellish every performance with scripted destruction. Tonight those folks would have been very satisfied indeed. After two songs, the bass drum dies. Attempts to resuscitate it fail, and by the fourth song half the venue has erupted into a full-on bar-room brawl. Guitars are hurled, basses are whacked, beer bottles are thrown, a hole is torn in the side of the tent and drums are tossed unsentimentally into the street outside. Audience members charge the stage wielding microphone stands like spears, and Mogwai are down the front vocally contributing to the chaos. Then the plus is pulled and the band, practically in handcuffs, are ushered away.

You get a choice. More spectacle or more tunes. Tonight the flailing limbs and splintered wood made for fantastic theatre, but it was the music that paid the price. Trail of Dead were set to debut four new songs, giving us an indication of what to look for on the anticipated follow-up to 'Madonna', but now they'll have to wait. This makes no difference to the faction who say Trail Of Dead have no tunes anyway, or those unable to hear anything in the band's rhythmic noisiness other than a detuned debt to Sonic Youth. Yet for those who find chilling grace in the sweeping roar of 'A Perfect Teenhood' and violent beauty in the disenchanted undertow of 'Mistakes & Regrets', the short shrift given to the songs is more disappointing than a dozen shows with no broken instruments.

But hey, let's not be churlish for we have witnessed heroic feats of equipment bashing - and anyone who didn't find it damn exciting must have been cowering behind the bar. The band haven't played on home turf for quite some time, and tonight they announced their return with the rock'n'roll equivalent of a pyrotechnic display for visiting dignitaries. Of course, this means they're not only banned from the venue but from all future SXSW events (tearing down a Coors banner and trampling it isn't a great way to ingratiate oneself with the sponsors). Where they're headed, however, won't matter - this is the way history is written.