On the Record: Trail

Artist : ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead
Album: Worlds Apart (Universal Music)

Never mind the parental advisory sticker on the album's cover that cautions about its explicit content. Despite the warning, this Austin, Texas-based art-punk outfit is one serious band. In fact, there is only one `f' word in the entire album.

You need only to glance at the album's artwork to measure the band's seriousness, the pictures of Johann Sebastian Bach and William Shakespeare put alongside a cavalry battle from medieval times.

And the music in Worlds Apart is the sonic manifestation of the visual. In To Russia, My Homeland, the Trail deliver an extended violin solo suitable for ballroom dancing.

Such a composition, employing strings, horns and piano, is played repeatedly in the interstices of hard rocking tracks that mostly take their cue from vintage Sonic Youth tunes circa 1988.

Listen to this record and immerse yourself in a true rock opera. -- M. Taufiqurrahman

;JP;MTR;CD; ANPAc..r.. Music-OTR JP/17/OTR

Artist: Manic Street Preachers Album: Lifeblood (Sony Music)

Formed in the late 1980s, Manics vowed that the group would be disbanded after one album. But a decade on, and with the death of their founding guitarist, the Welsh trio still stand tall with six studio albums and a greatest-hits package to their credit. If anything, they have grown old gracefully.

Once dubbed the new Clash for their buzzing guitars and politically-charged lyrics, the Welsh trio now resembles latter- day U2. And their latest album Lifeblood is U2's Achtung Baby, complete with its chiming guitars and spiritual musings.

"So god is dead like Nietzche said, superstition is now all we have left" guitar-playing vocalist James Dean Bradfield sings in the opener 1985.

The album reaches its peak during the outro of Emily, when Bradfield's interlocking three-track guitar works sound almost ethereal.

It also sums up the whole album, a lavish studio work combined with persistent bravado. -- M. Taufiqurrahman