God damn free WordPress won't let me put my logo on the actual top of the page. Piece of shit.
I’ll admit that I’m not too familiar with Thrice’s work. They’re one of those bands that you’ve heard the name of hundreds of times, but couldn’t name a single song… at least for me anyways. So, as I was looking through a list of recently released albums, I saw this live album from Thrice… and me being especially critical of bands that put out live albums… I decided to review it. Here goes nothing.
(Brief pause for the loadage and tokeage of my sweet glass bong… and also the listening to the rest of this album.)
Not good.
Going into this album, I expected Thrice to sound like a lot of the other “alternative rock” bands that are thriving in our radios. I base this expectation on the other music that my good buddy Sam (who I’m pretty sure owns a Thrice CD or two) listens to, which is mostly alternative rock bands from the 2000-present era, and mostly crap, in my professional opinion.
And, if I may digress for a moment, most of these bands that compose the alternative rock genre of the 2000-present era share similar characteristics. They’re generic. They all sound the same. They use lots of simple powerchords on the guitar and have a guy whining or screaming on the microphone, singing simply and lifeless melodies. Furthermore, their guitars are distorted to an extreme, which (poorly) covers up for the fact that their musicianship skills are greatly lacking for people who call themselves professionals and make wads of cash from their fanbase of 14-year-olds and other people that are slaves to FM radio.
Anyways, back to Thrice. After hearing a few songs… the band and album was not TOO bad and not TOO generic. They are listenable in some situations. BUT, by no means would I ever buy this album or anything Thrice puts out from here on out.
They are an average band, who seem to have hit it big during a sad chapter in music history where this crap is being mass produced… but, there were a couple highlights to this album. Come All You Weary isn’t bad, but it’s nothing spectacularly great either. It’s a pretty decent song.
But for every decent song, there was one that I couldn’t wait for to be over. Such as Red Sky, Silhouette, and especially, Hold Fast Hope.
Some advice for the band: Get a better guitarist, or maybe add another guitarist… one that can play a good melody and some cool lead fills. And learn to not sound like every other crap new Alt Rock band out there when you sing.
Toke on.
