Dustin Kensrue – Vocals and guitar
Teppei Teranishi – Guitars and piano
Riley Breckenridge – Drums and percussion
Eddie Breckenridge – Standard and upright bass
To take stock of Thrice’s discography is to witness the dramatic evolution of a band perpetually committed to pushing their own creative boundaries, taking their music to new and breathtaking heights of expression and challenging fans to explore each startling soundscape the group conjures, while simultaneously promoting social awareness and change. From the raw power and technical onslaught of early records Identity Crisis and The Illusion of Safety, to the perfect marriage of fury and melody on The Artist In The Ambulance, to the bold, mesmerizing experimentation of Vheissu, Thrice has always been a band on the cutting edge, running well ahead of their peers. That divide continues to widen still further.
The California-based quartet, who’ve also been busy of late making high-profile main stage appearances at the Coachella, Reading & Leeds and Bamboozle festivals, have followed the New Pantheon Award-nominated Vheissu’s radical metamorphosis with The Alchemy Index, a two-volume collection comprised of four EPs, each devoted to one of the essential elements in nature—fire, water, air and earth—with each EP sonically and thematically tailored to evoke the atmosphere inherent in its corresponding element. This past fall marked the release of the first two volumes of the series—Fire and Water—and now Earth and Air are scheduled for an April debut, completing the tremendous vision and scope of the project. For Thrice, it’s the realization of a year-long process of writing and recording, which was done primarily in the band’s own studio and engineered by guitarist Teppei Teranishi, without the assistance of an outside producer.
“We’re kind of doing something that’s the opposite of what a producer is supposed to do on a record—which is make everything make sense
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and kind of fit together—whereas this project is all about taking things apart and pushing them one way,” says Teranishi. “We really wanted to try doing things our way this time around, and make this record sound the way we want it to sound, not the way it’s supposed to sound.”
“Dustin [Kensrue] came up with the idea of using the elements, and separating all of the feels that we normally come up with,” adds bassist Eddie Breckenridge. “That was scary at first, because part of what our sound is, is that combination and the experiment of mixing different feels, but this is actually helping us push each feel in a further direction.”
The second installment of The Alchemy Index opens with Volume III: Air, which as its title would suggest, is the most ethereal of the EPs, not just in its spacious palette of tones and textures, but also in its indefinable qualities. Turbulent lead track “Broken Lungs,” offers a stormy indictment of those who’ve led the public astray concerning the truths behind 9/11; based on the film The Boy Who Could Fly, “ A Song For Milly Michaelson” presents an open letter of innocent love; and tapping into an underlying theme of fatherhood present at multiple points throughout the four EPs, the equally bluesy and orchestral “Daedalus” revisits the Icarus myth Thrice previously explored on Artist In The Ambulance’s “The Melting Point Of Wax,” this time considering the viewpoint of Icarus’ fearful father, who cares only for the safety of his doomed son.
“I think there’s a lot to be seen in any story—there’s different sides and multiple viewpoints. Before I’d kind of taken it as Icarus finding this glory at the cost of his life, but it was something that he had to do,” Kensrue explains. “You [also] see a father trying to take care of his son and have the best for him, and watching kind of helplessly as [Icarus] spirals toward disaster. I think that’s also a valid view. And maybe, me becoming a father, I can see a little more of that story now….I think our lives move in stories too, so we relate to that.”
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