Elements
I know I’ve already posted today, but I just got my hands on an advanced copy of Thrice’s new Alchemy Index, Vol. III and IV: Air and Earth, and it’s is completely blowing me away. I feel like it’s time to give Thrice their due in one of my coveted, infamous blog entries.
Contrary to what some might have you believe, Thrice is not a Christian rock band. At least not in that sense, anyways. The band members might be Christian, and the songs might have religious themes, but the lead singer Dustin Kensrue didn’t want to have a band that’s looked at that way, especially since it isn’t really the only theme they play on. Back in 2001, I heard Thrice’s Identity Crisis, and despite that being their worst album, I was floored by the grinding metal riffs and Dustin’s beautifully in-tune, throaty screams. Back then, metal annoyed the shit out of me, and Thrice was offering something that lied between punk, the elusive, undefinable ‘emo’, and metal, and it was beautiful. Since then, the band has continued to improve, to jaw-dropping degrees. 2002′s The Illusion of Safety was the album that really sealed the deal for me, and it’s still one of my favorite albums. I had heard “Betrayal is a Symptom” on one of the Plea For Peace compilations before the album dropped, and I knew then that their next album was going to be nuts. Then there was The Artist in the Ambulance in 2003 (which is considered by seemingly all my friends to be their best album) which perfected their sound and actually pushed them into the mainstream. After that point, though, is when they decided that they were going to experiment with their sound. This is generally when people stopped liking them as much, and when they released Vheissu in 2005, everyone kind of got angry and said that they had sold out. Which isn’t true, because selling out entails doing something that will push you into the limelight even further and introduce your music to a larger, less focused audience that are more interested in rock radio singles than in having a musical experience. I think that’s the important part of the issue, because Vheissu was the first time that they tried to do something that really flowed like a poem. It still had a few tracks where there was screaming and chugging guitars, but it changed so much that the album itself dipped into several different genres. Finally, they released The Alchemy Index, Vol. I and II: Fire and Water in 2007 and are finishing it off with the The Alchemy Index, Vol. III and IV: Air and Earth on Tuesday. The two albums are actually four EPs, really, with something like six songs on each one, and each one is distinctively different. Water is kind of a laid back, slow, incredibly musical EP, with a lot more electronic influence than any of their other work. Fire, as you might suspect, is their heavy EP, which just is in your face gnashing and grinding of guitars. Then there is the new stuff, which might be their best work to date. Air is also a really slow, heavy on instrumental EP, where Dustin proves that he can sing really, really well. In the best track on Air called “A Song For Milly Michaelson,” Dustin sings, “Here we go/Hold on tight and don’t let go/I won’t ever let you fall/I love the night/If I ignore these city lights/But I love you most of all.” Earth is my favorite, because it reduces Thrice to acoustic guitar, bass, and a piano, and it really flies into new territory that Dustin’s solo career turned to. The first song, called “Moving Mountains,” is the best I’ve heard from them, with the opening lines, “I speak in many tongues through many men/Argue with angels and I always win/But I don’t know the first thing about love.” It’s more of a folk-blues type album, and the last song definitely has some gospel influences. It also is their most religious-feeling work, I think. And it’s fucking badass.
