Pitchfork: Trail of Dead's So Divided

"As was the case with its predecessor, the aesthetic faux-pas on So Divided can be cringe-inducing. It's not pretty. But there's a much bigger problem at hand: Trail of Dead don't even sound like a rock band any more. So Divided is even more elaborately orchestrated and structured than Source Tags and Codes, but its complexity seems inorganic and clumsy, revealing the weakness of the source material rather than elevating and enhancing it. There's certainly nothing wrong with forgoing traditional rock instrumentation in favor of lavish arrangements and studio trickery, but the bells and whistles here don't even begin to fill the void created by a complete dissipation of the group's energy. Even when the dizzyingly disparate pieces of the album do fall into place, it seems like the work of some external hand; the band achieves crystalline structural vistas, but it's never quite clear how they got there, or why." [Pitchfork: 5.5]