Thrice – Major/Minor Album Review

Orange County band Thrice have certainly come a long way from playing emotive post-hardcore (or screamo) and touring with bands like American Nightmare, Converge, and Bane, to creating interesting and dense straight-ahead rock albums. It’s not like this is big news, though; Thrice have been moving further along from their second major label album Vheissu since their Alchemy Index series.

Like with their last album, Beggars, Thrice take a much more succinct approach with their latest record, Major/Minor. Take, for example, “Blinded” — a song slightly over four minutes. When compared to recordings in the band’s past, whether it’s from The Illusion Of Safety or any of the Alchemy Index EPs, it’s far different and has very little in common with those. There’s no shredding, no screaming, no weird electronic bridges; there’s only a four-piece rock band.

The album’s strongest track, “Call It in the Air” is a mid-tempo number and has an amazing anthem-esque quality to it, shortly followed by “Blur,” a faster jam that is probably closest to what Thrice recorded on The Artist And The Ambulance.

As I stated earlier, there’s a stark contrast to Thrice now and Thrice twelve years ago. And while kids love to complain about how the band has changed (i.e. they’re no longer just shredding on every song and screaming a bunch), the fact of the matter is, they’re afforded the opportunity to make a pretty solid rock album that isn’t just the glitz and glam of the kinds of groups that Thrice inadvertently spawned (Bring Me the Horizon, Parkway Drive, et. al.).

There’s a solid connection between Major/Minor and “Beggars, so chances are, if you liked their last record, you’ll no doubt enjoy the hell out of this one.