The source of the band's name, ... AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF THE DEAD, is a long, complicated story which can be traced back to Prescott Phillips Meyer, who had discovered several Mayan scrolls while toiling at the site of the lasting remains of a Mayan city in the lower Yucatan known as Machuxla, which couldn't he unfortunately fully translate. Calling on the services of former associate Ethan Allen Vanderpool, a linguistics professor at Harvard University, agreed to join him in his quest to decipher the foreign texts. Meyer harboured a theory that the Mayan religion and the ancient Babylonian mythos were somehow connected, based on architectural similarities between the two cultures. Although not confirming this theory, it suggested the possibility the Mayans and Viking explorers holding conversations in the late 10th century. In transcribed passages chronicling the Mayans meeting with "horning foreigners" is the description of a religious rite conducted on the eve of the Mayan New Year. The ceremony, summoning the Mayan corn gods Apuk's spirit, starts with the opening lines;

"Sever for us all ties between the now and what is to be

We will act as your sword, oh Great Itzamna

And you will know us by the trail of dead."

Egyptian burial texts of the 13th dynasty bore a similar reference, the Book of the Dead papyrus revealing an incantation for letting a soul rejoin its corpse in the realm of the dead (Spell 89);

"O you who bring, you who run

You who are in the booth of the Great God...

...If the bringing of my soul to me from anywhere is delayed

You will find the Eye of Horus standing us thus against you

And you will know it by a Trail of the Dead."

... AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD supported AUDIOSLAVE's June 2005 European dates.