Track Listing

1. First breath After Coma
2. The only moment we were alone
3. Six days at the bottom of the ocean
4. Memorial
5. Your Hand In Mine

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1695 in Music
• Released on: 2003-11-03
• Number of discs: 1

CD Description
Explosions in the Sky is set to make a noticeable mark on the indie rock scene. It combines epic guitar architecture a la Sonic Youth, the spatial manipulation of slowcore bands like Low, and the instrumental rock ambition of upstarts likeMogwai. While the band's 2001 debut trafficked in whiplash stylistic change-ups and hard rock dynamics, THE EARTH IS NOT A COLD DEAD PLACE is strikingly uniform in tone and sensibility. Here the group's straightforward instrumentation of guitars, bass, and percussion coalesces into a shifting landscape of lovely and irresistible dreaminess.

Customer Reviews

A phenomenal follow-up to 'Those Who Tell The Truth...'
Faced with the difficult task of bettering the superb 'Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever', Explosions In The Sky have done just that with 'The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place'.

The tone of the album is more consistent this time around, with predominantly clean, high-register guitars weaving beautiful, intricate melodies around each other. With sparser use of the distortion pedals than on 'Those Who Tell Truth...' (which inevitably led to comparisons of that album with much of Mogwai's early work), the shifts in dynamics are more subtle, but no less effective. Opener 'First Breath After Coma' starts with a single plucked guitar note, soon joined by a delicate chiming two-note progression, until skittering percussion enters. The track builds momentum with clean guitars shimmering like The Edge with less reverb, before it falls into eerie ambience from which rises a simple, repetitive interplay between two guitars, eventually overwhelmed by splashing cymbals and a slowly rising, buzzing, droning distortion.

'The Only Moment We Were Alone' is even more impressive, the band wielding delicate beauty and overwhelming power with equal aplomb. The dynamic fluctuations are breathtaking and the track ends with the album's heaviest moment, the most crushingly cathartic, yet desperately gorgeous noise committed to record this year.

The remaining three tracks offer more of the same, all maintaining the high standards set by the first two. Some may complain that this consistency of tone makes 'The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place' a little too samey, but the quality and invention of the melodic interplay between the guitars and the spot-on percussion make this a thoroughly engaging album from start to finish. You might even be able to get your friends who dismiss the post-rock in your record collection to love it, and praise for this type of instrumental music doesn't come much higher than that...

Explosions indeed
Mentioning Explosions In The Sky in the same breath as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mogwai, perhaps the two most well-known exponents of (mostly) instrumental rock music, is common practice for journos, reviewers, and complete amateurs like myself. I would gather this comparison is something of a mixed blessing for this excellent Texan outfit. In some ways it helps turn people on to their music, and fans of such bands will no doubt find something to love in Explosions In The Sky. However, I believe this record will also appeal to a broader range of music fans.

Having stumbled across the excellent “Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever”, I was in some way both prepared for, and very much looking forward to Explosions In The Sky’s next album. This record had a lot to live up to, and I am glad to say it has. Perhaps more subtle, and certainly less rocky than “Those Who…”, this new album is also a step forward for Explosions In The Sky. It sounds breathtaking: beautiful melodies, unforced build-ups, and chiming guitars. It proves guitars, bass, and drums can still be used to create something fresh if put together well enough. No-one is likely to want to switch the stereo off and check the window to see if the world really has ended, but this record is still emotional. Explosions In The Sky sound like a band enjoying themeselves as everything around them goes up in smoke. The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place after all.

Please ignore 'a music fan' from lancashire
Well, although the one bad review is vastly outnumbered, and having recently bought 'the earth is not a cold dead place' I felt compelled to set the record straight, in a way.
Yes, Explosions ARE working within the structure of post-rock, and of course parallels cannot help but be made with GSYBE, Mogwai, Silver Mount Zion etc...(this has happened, and will always happen throughout the music industry), but the thing to be remembered is that Explosions have offered us here an absolute masterpiece of atmospheric, enchanting, blistering musical magic. The touch, feel and delicacy of gaps between the 'explosions' leaves you salivating, incapacitated and utterly disarmed...then comes the perfection in timing and restraint within the build-ups, to eventually send your heart and soul into orbit through the ferocious musical 'orgasms'. They have used a structure put in place by the pioneers of post-rock, and discarded the angst, isolation and chilling emptiness so apparent within many other similar bands....leaving pure, unadultered beauty and optimism throughout. Absolutely stunning....if I could choose a soundtrack to die to, then my search is over.