14 April 2011
Thursday frontman, Geoff Rickly was quoted as saying the band’s sixth album is inspired by The Cure, The Smiths and Portishead. With an album that departs from post-hardcore and lands heavy-footed upon atmospheric rock, he couldn’t have been more honest.
The album, No Devolución (Spanish for 'no return') is darker and more depressive than the Jersey sextet’s other five offerings. Thursdaywere once poster-boys for emo with bite, but because of this, No Devolución may alienate longtime fans who don’t want to move into experimental rock territory with them.
“Just lose your eyes and go fast to the end,” sings Rickly on album opener, Fast To The End. This track and its follower, No Answers set the tone for the record. Although each track is very much individual both lyrically and instrumentally (Fast To The End could very well explain the album title and No Answers explores the impossibility of friendship with an ex); the subject matter has one common thread, its moody tone.
On Sparks Against The Sun, sprinklings of Portishead can be found where Thursday tip their hat to psychedelic rock. In the more radio friendly track, Magnets Caught In A Metal Heart Rickly sings literally of being lost in love, “his only true north is down.”
Rickly touches on a rough patch he experienced in his marriage on the solemn down-tempo track, Empty Glass and his fear of the afterlife in the melancholic guitar-stripped track, A Darker Forest.
Up until the point of A Gun In The First Act, No Devolución could have been deemed an acutely personal record with guitars and percussion taking the forefront to mask Rickly’s bleeding, open heart. However, with lyrics like “back to the way that it was before when symbols weren’t just loaded guns and black clouds weren’t just metaphors,” where Rickly comments on religious symbols as the cause of society’s ostracism, this departure from post-hardcore is as individual as each of its counterparts.
No Devolución is out April 15 through Epitaph Records.
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