[Writ Review]

Album: War All The Time
Artist: Thursday

by Nicholas Sabin

After hours spent listening to this record, I have come to the following conclusion: it is impossible to listen to this album passively. From the first four beats of the opening track, it's as though a single fist shoots forth from the speakers and forcibly takes your attention, grabbing you by your collar and pulling you in.

Originally from New Brunswick, New Jersey, Thursday craft a sonic assault which melts strains of emo, hardcore, and punk rock together. The result is a wall of sound behind which the words of singer Geoff Rickly soar like a fusillade of passion and sincerity. Intermittent strains of melody shimmer and fade like fireworks, and the resultant image is one of pure beauty.

One of the most notable aspects of War All The Time is that, despite being a very loud and aggressive record, the lyrics are easily the equal (if not the superior) of the instrumentation. From the opening bombast of "For The Workforce, Drowning," ("falling from the top floor / your lungs fill like parachutes / windows go rushing by") Thursday paint a picture of urgent, immediate desperation. Thematically, it carries through the album's eleven tracks. "Between Rupture and Rapture" follows up the artistry ("every bird in mid flight is calling out your name / before it hits the window and it sings the rapture") with a tangled combination of hoarse screams and a jagged, schizophrenic rhythm - and it's only the second track.

Remarkably enough, Thursday manage to make their way around the brutal, mindless aggression that tends to permeate similar records (I'm looking right at you, Limp Bizkit). Instead, they compliment the collage of guitar and drums with lyrics that are actually worth paying attention to. When Rickly openly pleads "if we fly a white flag / across the black and blue sky / will the red sun rise," I silently put the picture together in my head. Much like the evocative descriptions of a well-written poem, this kind of image composition happens frequently upon listening to War All The Time. Despite the fact that it's not a concept album, per se, the concepts of the songs are very cohesive, therefore making it easy to look at this album as a totality of its parts, unlike the "two singles and ten filler" albums which constantly frequent the Top 40 racks.

Although this is quite possibly the loudest and most aggressive record I've reviewed for the Writ, it may also be one of the most noteworthy if only for the masterful synthesis between the instinctive expression of screaming and the well-crafted words that underscore every note. While certainly not easy listening by any stretch of the imagination, War All The Time is also aptly named in that it may well inspire some form of revolution.

[As an aside, I would like to open up this column. Instead of writing about releases from national, major-label bands, I would much rather write about local bands and performers. If you've got a demo, if you've got a record, feel free to contact me - nick_sabin@yahoo.com - and perhaps something can be arranged. - NBS]