Thrice On 'Horizons/West': 'It's Thematically More Dense Than Anything We've Done Except For Probably The Alchemy Index'

Thrice have always been difficult to pin down – not that that’s a bad thing.

Appreciated by music lovers across the emo, post-hardcore, and alternative rock fandoms, the American band have always had their own thing going on and always stand out despite being in a stacked music scene.

The band made their name with the melodic hardcore, emo-inspired duo of albums, 2000’s Identity Crisis and 2002’s The Illusion of Safety. With 2003’s The Artist in the Ambulance, Thrice successfully broke into the mainstream, scoring hits with singles All That’s Left and Stare At The Sun.

With 2005’s Vheissu, however, Thrice began to showcase their experimental side, incorporating pianos, slowing down, and reduced screaming from vocalist Dustin Kensrue, which made the heavier moments stand out more than ever.

Thrice continued their discography with a four-disc concept album about the four elements: Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. The Alchemy Index (Volumes I & II released in 2007, Volumes III & IV in 2008) further tinkers with their sound, showcasing acoustic guitar playing and earthy tones, while balancing crushing heaviness with electronics on the former.

It’s fair to say that Thrice’s music became increasingly experimental, with flashes of ambient music, atmospheric rock, and trip-hop blending seamlessly into their signature rock sound. 2009’s Beggars arrived with more surprises, however, with Kensrue and guitarist Teppei Teranishi pulling from the blues, and brothers Eddie (bass) and Riley Breckenridge (drums) showing a new penchant for grooves. Over time, Kensrue’s voice developed into a smoky, raspy tone—perfect for the embrace of bluesier elements.

Experimental rock LP Major/Minor, released in 2011, marked the last album from Thrice before the band went on hiatus, eventually returning with the hard rock, grunge-fused To Be Everywhere Is to Be Nowhere in 2016. With their return, Thrice haven’t let up, releasing another two albums, Palms in 2018, and Horizons/East in 2021.

This week, Thrice release their twelfth album, the outstanding Horizons/West. A sibling album to Horizons/East, the album marks the first time the band have directly unveiled a sequel to a previous release since The Alchemy Index.

“So, the original plan was to have two albums that would come out closer together, maybe six or nine months apart, something like that,” Kensrue tells The Music ahead of the release of Horizons/West.

Feeling inspired by Horizons/East, the band started making a record, a process that can often be “taxing” despite being “a lot of fun.” However, the resulting music revealed that Thrice had “less in our tanks than we thought we would,” and they realised that they’d have a better record on their hands if they waited.

“There are carry-throughs in a couple of the tracks from what we were planning to be West in the beginning, but then a lot of it was just stuff that we kind of dreamed up in the last couple of years,” Kensrue admits.

“And I think the big positive of waiting was, I was able to know that this was coming and gather lyrically a lot more weight of images and things that I wanted to bring into that West record. And so, I think it's thematically more dense than anything we've done except for probably The Alchemy Index.”

Making it to album twelve is an impressive feat for any band, especially in the age of streaming and as fathers who don’t tour as rigorously as they did in the early 2000s. But, over two decades into their career, Thrice don’t have anything to prove “to anyone other than ourselves.”

“Something we've done that's been helpful over time is not ever really setting out to prove anything to anyone other than ourselves, which I think has been helpful to the sustainability of the band,” Kensrue tells.

“I don't know; there’s a lot of good things that come when you're not looking for some sort of external motivation with creative endeavours, especially, and we're always motivated by challenging ourselves.

“But more than that, even, I think the joy in creation and discovery and trying to see what we can do is what's exciting to us. That’s the way we approached this record, as well.”

And Thrice challenged themselves further with Horizons/West.

The opening track, Blackout, is richly cinematic and is subsequently followed by two melodic, heavy songs in Gnash and Albatross.

Some of the band’s most unique songs are featured on their latest effort, with electronics showcased on the album opener and Undertow, as well as ambient textures appearing on the sublime album closer, Unitive/West.

Meanwhile, Eddie’s bass is prominent on the punk-infused Crooked Shadows, with the groove of old Thrice in the spotlight. Kensrue’s softer vocal range is more pronounced on the longer tracks, Vesper Light and Unitive/West. It’s a solid rock album, and Thrice continue to be in form following their hiatus.

“We're very much album-oriented people as a format of audio art, I guess,” Kensrue says, reflecting on the sequencing on their latest album. “And so, it means a lot to us. But this one was maybe easier than the others.

“We had the first two songs, and the last two were pretty set from the time we were really jamming on the record together. Very early on, we were like, ‘Okay, we see this opening, and we see this closing,’ and that made it a little easier to work out the middle.”

Discussing Unitive/West and its ties to Unitive/East, Kensrue notes that both songs are built from the same idea – both conceptual songs from the beginning, where the idea was to blend multiple time signatures and put them over each other “because we’re nerds,” he chuckles.

“The first one was done with piano, and it's in a major key, and this one, with the theme of everything, has this kind of sun-setting ending in a minor key,” he explains. “It feels darker.”

Despite the darkness, the actual recording of Unitive / West stemmed from something sweet. Kensrue recalls, “We actually recorded this out in a playground that my kids had played at a couple of years ago that had all these different bells and tines everywhere. I had figured out what notes were present in the whole park and mapped out where we could play them.

“So, we went there at night and did that. It was cool! It took longer than I thought it would, but the funny thing is, it made us realise how loud the world is [laughs]. Like, I gotta be quiet! It's 10:30 pm and there are planes and dogs and birds and people running and cars. So, we just kept having to redo it.

“I think we've always enjoyed more cinematic moments in a lot of music, and that's something that we've tried to do, especially with ending or beginning albums. My personal gripe is: I feel like a lot of beginning tracks kind of miss the mark, and it's too much atmosphere or something to let you in.

“I feel like you need just enough to pull you in, but it's got to be a song too. I think with both of these records, we really tried to think through, ‘How does that first song set the tone for how you hear the rest of the tracks?’ And then, ‘How does the last song take you out of this journey?’”

Thrice pulled in additional energy and creative confidence following the double-decade anniversaries of The Illusion of Safety and The Artist in the Ambulance, with the latter resulting in a “Revisited” album featuring special guests including Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull, Chuck Ragan of Hot Water Music, Sam Carter of Architects, and more.

“I think we would all say that playing both Illusion of Safety for some of the shows we did around that and redoing The Artist in the Ambulance right afterwards absolutely had an effect on how we thought of that old stuff,” Kensrue admits, telling The Music that those opportunities allowed the band to get “reacquainted” with some of the energy and “modalities of playing.”

In 2023, Thrice returned to Australia and celebrated the 20th anniversary of The Artist in the Ambulance. Yet another successful trek Down Under, Kensrue reflects on the tour, “I feel like every time we come down to Australia, we just have a blast.

“We love the country, and people are super welcoming. The shows are a lot of fun. I won't lie, we're big fans of your guys’ breakfast [laughs]. The breakfast game is strong! So, that's always everyone's excited about that.”

And fans can be assured that Thrice will be back soon. He teases, “It will be announced sometime coming up that we'll be heading out that way…”

He adds, “Revisiting it in the way that, the same way that you would like, looking back to something external to your own heart, to from a certain time now, it's been long enough where you're like, ‘Yeah, that was kind of cool.’

“Whether it was a certain style, or a haircut or something, and being able to look at it and be like, ‘That's cool, I like that,’ and not have it feel forced upon us by ourselves or by something on the outside where we felt like we had to keep doing the same thing.

“So, it was very natural coming home to some of that stuff. And I think the easiest place to point it out, like it would be the double bass on the end of Gnash, which was something we hadn't done in 20 years or longer. And I just kind of suggested it, almost as a joke. We tried it, and it just felt fun. It felt right. So, yeah, I think it's been a good time to be able to re-appropriate some of that stuff.”

Lyrically, Horizons/West finds Thrice exploring themes of personal identity, societal manipulation, technological anxiety, and spiritual awakening. Upon announcing the record in July, Kensrue explained that much of the album is about “parsing reality.”

He added, “We’re constantly being influenced by algorithms, by fear, by our own social echo chambers. Horizons/West tries to pull the curtain back on some of that. We’ve always just followed our curiosity, wherever it leads. We want to keep growing, exploring, and making something that feels honest to who we are right now.”

When asked about how he copes with the influence of algorithms and the addictive nature of echo chambers, Kensrue tells The Music that his most effective coping mechanism is meditation.

“For me, I noticed that I could tell if I haven't been sitting enough… if I start getting really agitated in traffic, it's like a red flag for me,” he explains. “I'm just like, ‘Okay, something else is going on in there. You gotta chill!’

“Some of that stuff doesn't come through right in the bios, but the big picture that I tried to have, essentially, I took the image of the setting sun and tried to weave it through most of the record, but let it take on different meanings and different songs.

“So, sometimes it's on the dark low, where it's kind of this metaphor for mortality and death and how we approach that, how we fight it, or how we can make peace and try to think through that differently, or on Crooked Shadows, where it's this kind of hope for ending some of the worse manifestations of certain ways of thinking and being in the world that are out there right now.

“I thought that was fun to have a central image and metaphor. But, to not lock it down, to mean the same thing on every song.”

Horizons/West will be released on Friday, 3 October, via Epitaph Records. You can pre-order the album here.