Pitchfork

Place "Worlds Apart" (complete with sarcastic vocal snippets and "Fuck you"'s) in its lineage as anti-mainstream scorn-rock in the most caustic Sex Pistols/Frank Zappa tradition, and Trail of Dead's vitriolic coverage of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway begins to make sense. Trail of Dead are very, very angry young men...I think.

"Back in New York City" (Genesis abbreviated it "N.Y.C.") features Conrad Keely, as the concept album's main character Rael, recounting criminal penchants for assault, rape, pyromania, and drug addiction, along with vague reference to masturbation and homoeroticism. (Though the "rock opera" couches these lyrics in Rael's headtrip, so all that's up for debate.) Meanwhile, the band struggles to keep up with a barrage of time-signature shifts. Everybody (especially a rasping Keely) labors through the impossible chorus, which eschews "romantic escape" for violent sex, whilst bleating synths and artlessly pounded drums render this a brittle, forced update of perhaps Genesis and The Lamb's most nimble proto-New Wave achievement.

Easily the most interesting lyrical move here (both today and back in '74) is "Your progressive hypocrites hand out their trash/ But it was mine in the first place, so I'll burn it to ash." Peter Gabriel had by then earned his invective, having already written several of the decade's top prog LPs; 30 years later, Trail of Dead are equally livid over the music culture of the mid-00s, so I guess Gabriel/Rael's proclamation offers a fitting stance for them to assume. OK, fine. Visceral prog hallucinations work for the Mars Volta, right? But then why is "Back in New York City" sandwiched between "Worlds Apart" and a blissful rendition of trippy-dippy Monkees/Carole King psych classic "The Porpoise Song"? Because Zappa had a bit part in Head, maybe? Yeah, I have no idea either.