Among the highlights are a dramatic, piano-addled cover of Guided By Voices’ “Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory,” the sturdy, strutting “Life” and the multi-faceted closer “Sunken Dreams,” which most closely resembles Trail Of Dead circa 2002′s acclaimed “Source Tags & Codes.”

Elsewhere, the band pushes the envelope on “Stand in Silence,” where a quasi-inspirational interlude is sandwiched in between a major-key rocker, and the hyper-rhythmic “Wasted of State of Mind,” which builds to an anthemic kiss-off: “caught in a stasis / feel like I’ve wasted all this time / with people and places who’ve never related or desired.”

“So Divided” is the follow-up to 2005′s “Worlds Apart,” which has sold less than half of “Source Tags.” “I put everything I had into that record, and recording it was a miserable ordeal,” group member Conrad Keely told Billboard.com in July. “After its reception I was pretty much ready to retire from music and find another career, convinced that I wanted nothing more to do with making music for anyone. But when we started this new album, which was meant to be an EP, I had a different attitude. Mainly, I tried not to care at all, and approach it with a more ‘I don’t give a f*ck’ outlook.”

Trail Of Dead will kick off a fall tour with Blood Brothers, Celebration and Brothers & Sisters Oct. 27 in Denver.

Here is the track list for “So Divided”: