Thursday Album: “War All the Time”

I'll just say, this album is stunning. I have always been impressed with Thrusday, but upon first full listen of WATT I fell in love. The music is harder, yet more melodic and harmonic, the mood it sets is a poisoned, rotting city, adn the lyrics are what wins me over. Thurwsdya has inspired me beyond belief. This CD is emo, but not the regular kind, not songs about fights over a girl, but about betrayal, the blessing and curse of love, and crumbling naiton of America.

For The Workforce, Drowning-10: Great intro, urgent feel, great guitar, and greatly benefited by the use of keyboards on this Thursday album. The lyrics are some of the best. "Memos swim throguh the current, computers spark like flares,I can see them, they don't touch me, touch me." A song about the prison thats everyday adult life, everyday being the same, and being near brainwashed by our jobs.

Between Rupture and Rapture-6: Good guiatr, not one of my favorites, but it grows on me.

Division St.-8: A new direction for Thusday. Heavy music with lots of melodies, a tragic song about betrayal of singer Geoff Rickley's friend, who he turned away from after discovering they were on heavy drugs, and was stabbed in the leg.

Signals Over The Air-9: First single of this cd, which pulled me in from the first listen on FUSE. People have said this song is about Geoff complaining Thursday doesnt get enough play-time. WRONG. "They stole the love from our lives and put the sex on the radio." This song is about the commercilazation of sex. Magazines have horrible articles on covers, for all to see, such as "25 sex tips to blow you away, try #17 tonight." The human race is sick with lust.

Marches and Manuevers-6: A song about the despair of war, and how it holds no glory.

Asleep in The Chapel-10: Awesome song with great guitar, lyrics questioning faith. Taking from Nero, the roman emperor. "Since we can't compete with modern saints, we douse ourselves in gasoline, and hang our bodies from the street lamps." Great.

This Song Bought To You By A Falling Bomb-10: This is not like any other Thrusdya songs. Just piano and Geoff, lyrics about solitude and depression, and facing the world in times of trial.

Steps Ascending-10: A heartbreaking song. Geff gets in a fight with a best friend. Before he can apoligize, which he fully intends too, the friend is shot and killed. Lyrics bought tears to me eyes. "I ran down the stars and in to the garden and thrust my hands into the soil, in the spring you will bloom like her heart through the blouse in the back of the ambulance, as it turned and turned down the stree, one mroe time would you come back to me, as it turned, its red lights you were turning into red roses.

War All The Time-10: Beautiful. A song about the wars fought everyday,all the time, not between armies and soldiers and nations, but family members, friends, and lovers. And the dying shadow of America.

M.Shepard-8: Great song, thanking Matthew Shepard and Marvin Gaye for their homosexuality, giving rights to gays. Love is love.

Tommorow I'll Be You-10:If TBS hadn't written Slodance on The Inside, this would be my all time favorite song, but there tied. Amazing. I cried. I love it. A man is sick. He has been told and told that he will be healed on New Year's Day, btu whn it come she still is fatigued from sickness, and keep telling himself it is a bad dream. And then he is cured. I fell in love.

I know I'm late with this, but nevertheless, buy this cd. Thursday is currently writing a follow up to WATT, due out in Fall 2005. All hail Thursday.

Take The Cure, throw in some Refused, supply a dash of At The Drive-In, add in sheer genius songwriting ability and a sound all their own, and you get the final product: Thursday.

War All The Time is Thursday's 3rd full length, and their first album recorded with major record label Island Records. Does this mean they "sold out"? Anything but that. It's just a shame Thursday are grouped with such garbage as Taking Back Sunday or Story of the Year, when they should be grouped with musical legends such as The Doors or Pink Floyd.

With this release, Thursday express their energy, musical talent and songwriting ability in an immensely strong fashion never heard nor seen before. From the crashing instrumentals and yelled vocals portrayed in the first track, "For the Workforce, Drowning," to the soft, piano ballad "This Song Brought To You By a Falling Bomb," to "Tomorrow I'll be You," where vocalist Geoff Rickly proclaims "We Are Cured," Thursday amaze me with how much heart and soul is put into this music, and show me that they truly love and care for what they're doing.

Probably the biggest factor that makes me a fan of Thursday and this album is the deep, personal meanings in the songs and how well the band presents them in a lyrical sense. It's like listening to an autobiography about Geoff's life through song. The title track "War All the Time" is a great example of this, as Rickly explains growing up in New Jersey while comparing it to a war and how America is slowly falling apart. To quote from the song, "War all the time, in the shadow of the New York skyline we grew up too fast, now we're falling apart, like the ashes of American flags."

Then there's the track "M. Shepard" which is dedicated to both Marvin Gaye and Matthew Shepard pertaining to their homosexuality, and peoples' differences in the human race in general, and how people in today's society are ridiculed for being different. And finally, "Steps Ascending," in which Rickly writes about one of his close friends whom he got into a fight with, and before they ever made up and became friends again, his friend was shot in the head and killed. This track also features, at about 2:40 in, the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard. Jonah from OneLineDrawing even lends in a part in the vocals. It's simply breathtaking, and has to be heard to be believed.

Thursday are currently working on their new album due out at the end of this year, and I'll be at the store to purchase it the day it comes out. If they can top this or any of their other albums, OR can even come close to it, it will be a modern day masterpiece.

Edit: Just to add, anyone who gives this album a one or two star review, calls this "emo," etc. is an absolute moron.

One of my many complaints about modern day rock is that often the only kind of bands you can find is the sickeningly soft and intelligent or the inanely loud and mindnumbing. Of course there are exceptions, and both of those types can be good. But I was very much looking for something new, something better. Thursday caught my interest with Full Collapse, a seemingly intelligent record overrun by screams in all the wrong places. Still, it was a better than average album, so i kept my eye on them. Then they put out War All the Time. To listen to the music itself, it is loud, fast, uplifting, with breakdowns and yells and anthemic beats all over the place. It is nice to listen to. Then i took out the lyric book one night and read through it, joyed to see that none of the intelligence had been lost and in fact, it was so coherent and mind-shattering, that i fell in love with it immediately. Then the next night, i put the cd in, took out the lyric book, and settled myself in for an experience. It has become one of my favorite albums by any in the emo/screamo/light metal genre. It is both hard and intelligent. This album, if given the due that it deserves, will transcend the decades and become one of the great albums for the future

When a band decides to incorporate scream vocals into their music, it can be either a really good thing, or a really bad thing. Talnented bands like Thursday can use scream vocals to help make their music more powerful and emotional, but 95% of the bands in "HxC" cannot. I HATE HATE HATE hardcore music, but Thursday is my only exception to that longstanding rule. I seriously think that there never has been, and never will never be, a band as good as them in their genre (and believe me, I've heard it all). Overall, I feel like "war all the time" is musically the bands best record. The lyrics, however, were slightly worse than "full colapse" (which held the epic "cross out the eyes"). This band is going somewhere, and I'd highly recommend both this record and their previous one. The best 12 bucks I ever spent on a cd.

Thursday has always been known for those hard hitting punk-rock beats and up-tempo guitar lines, but in this album they completely turn on their heads and make one killer sound. The songs come from the heart, not from the start. The best track is by far war all the time, which has the most emotion of any song ever. The guitars are almost begging you to cry and the vocals are precise and permanent upon your mind. When they play this song live they never have gone without crying, trust me, i have seen them live 30+ times. This band is great, just like the predesers The Dresden Dolls and My Chemical Romance. A completely amazing Album!