…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead were formed in late 1994 by singers/guitarists/drummers Jason Reece and Conrad Keely. These two were longtime friends who originally met in Hawaii before settling in Olympia, WA and then relocating together to Austin, TX. It was there that the duo played their first shows as “You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead,” eventually adding the extra grammatical elements to their name. Guitarist Kevin Allen and bassist/sampler Neil Busch made the band a quartet. The band went through a number of releases on a number of labels, eventually signing to Interscope, on which they issued the formidable ‘Source Tags & Codes’ in 2002, followed by ‘The Secret of Elena’s Tomb EP’ in 2003 and ‘Worlds Apart’, a prog rock-inspired epic, in 2005. Despite widespread acclaim for the album, its sales were disappointing. Their subsequent departure from Interscope Records convinced the musicians to launch their own label, Richter Scale Records, in partnership with the Texas-based Justice Records. Free of the constraints of conventional label deals, the band then brewed up a batch of contemporary prog anthems and released an EP, 2008’s ‘Festival Thyme’, to ramp up support for a full-length album. ‘The Century of Self’ followed in early 2009 and was released through Superball Music in the UK.
