There were just ninety tickets available for the intimate tour finale behind the grubby yet welcoming doors of The Windmill.  Mere days after sharing a headline slot at The Electric Ballroom with fellow hype casualties Rival Schools, Connor wanders around chatting to fans whilst sporting a promotional t-shirt of theirs.

The evening begins with an “exhibition” of Connor’s artwork, some of which features in the graphic novel that came with latest album Tao Of The Dead.  There’s a geeky, childlike nature to Connor’s work that believes in volume over subtlety as meticulously detailed fantasy pictures show a parallel between both his visual and aural expressions.  However the crowd feel about the quality of his musicianship, however, the draw of the evening sun is too much of a draw to come inside for a look before the music begins.

Ice, Sea, Dead People appropriately fill the support slot tonight with song after song of brattish screamo punk without a second of respite.  Like an accumulation of the thrashiest elements of Liars, Dananananaykroyd and Test Icicles, Craig Sharp and Eddoux take it in turns to scream the illegible lyrics of songs that couldn’t possibly last longer than a few minutes before imploding.  A description not a million miles away from the way you could have described …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead ten years ago.  Speaking of which…

The excitement is rife within the room as Trail Of Dead take to the stage and the opening notes of Will You Smile Again For Me burst out of their excessively loud amplifiers.  Despite the fact that only two remain from the line-up which produced that highlight of Worlds Apart, there’s no fatigue or awkwardness in this performance.  The energy spread through the crowd as the lack of numbers was more than made up with the ferocious limb flailing around.

The set list played almost as a greatest hits (discounting Neil Busch penned tracks like Baudelaire) as tracks from their now-extensive back catalogue battle for a place on the stage.  With devastating renditions of It Was There That I Saw You, Mistakes And Regrets and the expletive ridden Perfect Teenhood, I was like a sugar spiked child on a combined birthday / Christmas trip to the land of chocolate sponsored by Coca Cola.

The revitalised effect of the new line up gave additional energy to new tracks like Summer of All Dead Souls which sounded even more urgent on stage than on the return-to-form Tao Of The Dead.  Both leave the drum duties to new recruit Jamie Miller for the new tracks, evidently enjoying more guitar time, but as the set carries on, the instrument switches begin reminding us that these guys play their secondary instruments better than most can play their primary.  However the reduced drum times shows as excessive diet and reduced exercise has definitely taken it’s toll on the waistlines of Conrad Keely and Jason Reece, though they still seem hungry for more.

It was a perfect evening, if it were not for a couple who insisted on sticking around right at the front of the crowd and complaining about the commotion as though a Trail Of Dead gig would be better hosted at the Barbican as part of an orchestral collaboration.  To those people, Conrad said it best – “the atomic thrust is gonna tear you askew”.  Not that I’m implying that I was thrusting my pelvis at them.  I should stop typing.