In February 2009, the groundbreaking American Rock group And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead released their sixth LP, the Century of Self. By this point, the project which had originally formed as a duo in the mid-'90 's had transformed into a six-piece ensemble devoted to large-scale, uncompromising sounds - music that had as much in common with Progressive and Art Rock as with Indie or Punk. This concert was filmed for Rockpalast on 14 May 2009 at the Live Music Hall in Cologne, Germany. For more than 80 minutes, the six members leave it all onstage like a boxer trying to knock out his opponent with multiple body blows before he collapses from exhaustion himself. Not a single minute of it can be classified as easy listening. It's no secret that And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead resides at the other end of the artistic spectrum. In fact, one has to look long and hard to find anything comparable to their monumental walls of sound in contemporary rock music. Live at Rockpalast shows that reaching such heights is only possible with blood, sweat and tears.