Product Description

Explosions in the Sky's 2001 release offers a plethora of musical colours and fascinating detours. All six lengthy tracks are centred on moody guitar, bass, and drum textures. Theresult is a mix of subtle, organic tones and raucous, sometimes heavily amplified effects.
Overall, the music on THOSE WHO TELL THE TRUTH SHALL DIE, THOSE WHO TELL THE TRUTH SHALL LIVE FOREVER is as complex, long-winded, and obtuse as the title itself. However, the sonic landscape created by this eclectic quartet is also warm and inviting. The simple catch phrase for this style of music is emo-rock, which is an abbreviation for emotional rock. Like this style implies, these compositions are expressive and intense. Whether it is the screaming guitars of "Greet Death" or the brooding "The Moon is Down", this CD writhes with great musical transparency. The finest selection on this release may be the last track, "With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept". On this piece, the band uses a cornucopia of dense guitar sounds, a relentless military drum cadence, and dark chords that loop ominously.

Track Listing

1. Greet Death
2. Yasmin The Light
3. Moon Is Down
4. Have You Passed Through The Night
5. Poor Man's Memory
6. With Tired Eyes Tired Minds Tired Souls We Slept

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8045 in Music
• Released on: 2001-04-05
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Eh? I Feel I'm Missing Something...
I really don't understand the massive acclaim this album receives. I would go as far to say it's...boring!!!

GAH strike me down, (and I'm sure this little review will be...) but I find this album way too monotonous to be interesting. This review may come across as scathing, but don't get me wrong, I think this is decent (hence 3 stars), but I will explain why I don't understand the mass of 5 star reviews.

I am not an expert on post-rock, but I do very much enjoy a selection of bands from it. The best, and probably most obvious choice, being the mighty Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who always manage to create epic, sprawling pieces with monumental climaxes. Bands like Mogwai, Silver Mt. Zion and Fly Pan Am also very much interest me, but this album just doesn't come close.

After giving it repeated listens, and really wanting to like it, I cannot fool myself. My biggest disappointment was the lack of climaxes in songs, not one song here takes me to that 'different level' - that disorientating adrenaline rush that the best of this genre can create. The loud rocking sections are just too generic and the band do not build them up enough, shown instantly by "Greet Death" which just thunders in with a barrage of boring guitars and drums after some ambient (what I originally thought was going to be build-up play) noise.

Too often in the quiet sections the guitar motifs are simply boring. I mean, just noodling slowly up and down a scale is atmospheric to a degree, but quite simply DULL. And then all of a sudden the listener is hit with massive noise, again highlighted in "Yasmin The Light" which farts around for a couple of minutes, then all of a sudden the band just crash out a fast-tempo section with no notable riff or motif, just lots and lots of drums.

And this is another problem for me, the drumming. This guy must be in a marching band, because he ALWAYS opts for the drum roll march build-up, which is frankly repetitive and unoriginal.

The only song that I really enjoyed here, and can easily listen to again is "Have You Passed Through This Night?", with its brooding spoken-word intro which leads to a crushing finale. This song is how the band SHOULD be doing it, creating atmosphere - building - climax, instead of noodling around and then banging the life out of everything.

Disappointing album for me, showing potential to be great, but just never quite reaching it.

The Best of Post-Rock
Explosions in the Sky take a huge leap forward in confidence and compositional acumen for `Those Who Tell The Truth...', their second album.

The whole CD revels in contrasts between pounding rock guitars and delicate melody. The opening track, `Greet Death' is the perfect example. The slightest of intros bursts to life with an exhilarating guitar onslaught before shifting into a beautiful, restrained melody. It then builds to a climax of sweeping guitar passages.

`Yasmin the Light' builds on a heartbeat percussion and gossamer-thread melody before exploding into life and back again. `Moon Is Down's guitars wash in waves, anchored by a military-type drum pattern and build to a crescendo in a more controlled way.

The quality just keeps coming; the band sustains a very high level of playing, and most importantly variety, throughout (something which is a bit lacking in later releases). `Have You Passed Through the Night' even features an atmospheric spoken word sample as an intro, the only vocals Explosions have used on any of their records.

`With Tired Eyes...' is a fitting finale - so beautiful and powerful.

`Those Who Tell the Truth..' is a thrilling, challenging and consistently interesting record. In my opinion it is the band's finest and also ranks as one of the best in the Post-Rock genre. If you like carefully crafted, melodic music this CD is recommended without hesitation.

amazing.
explosions in the sky are one of the best post rock bands in existance, and this work is arguably their best. all of the songs are atleast great, and half are what i would rate as amazing. along with 65 days of static's 'fall of math' and godspeed you black emperor's 'F# A# (infinity)' should be in any post rock fans collection, nay, consist the very crux of said collection.
buy this album, it is awesome.