Raw Emotion, Intensity Fill New Thursday CD

Jessica Safavimehr, staff writer

Two and a half years after the release of “War All the Time,” Thursday is making a daring come back with this year’s release “A City By the Light Divided.”

Thursday is part of a music genre that died out along with girl’s jeans and black hair dye. Most screamo music sounds the same, with the same guy crying about the same girl who stepped all over his poor fragile heart a thousand times. But Thursday was able to break away from the norm and create music based on real-life tragedies, as well as being able to cope with the world around them.

“A City by the Light Divided” is full of raw emotion that only Thursday has been able to capture. Since it is my favorite band of all I time, I had high expectations for this album. They have fulfilled them so much so that I encourage everyone to listen to Thursday to improve their own musical aura. This album is like a story book, each song an unfolding chapter providing a climactic intensity that other bands only dream of being able to capture. The album opens with “The Other Side of the Crash,” a song Geoff Rickly, lead singer of Thursday, wrote after a friend was in a horrible car crash and how his own life changed after that.

During an interview, Rickly explained that this album is close to where the band was when they wrote “Waiting,” Thursday’s first full-length release. The album is filled with so much more emotion than “War All the Time,” and takes the music to a higher level. On this album, a new member has been permanently added, and the keyboard improvements of Andrew Everding are truly evident. Thursday has always had some sort of keyboard incorporated in the majority of their music, but to have it on every song is truly amazing.  The single from this new album, “Counting 5-4-3-2-1” is sure to make the air waves, not maybe not on MTV2 and the Fuse circuit, but this song is one to be loved by all the scene kids.

I got the chance to experience Thursday three times during spring break and each time they played “Counting,” the crowd went wild with excitement and was amazed by the new material. It’s hard to pick just one favorite song from this album. “At This velocity,” is such an intense song that can be felt through out your entire body, making you dance to the beat of each strum of the guitar. 

Not only does this album fulfill the intensity that Thursday is known for, it also scratches the surface of a softer side to the band with songs such as “Running From the Rain.”  With this new release, I am sure Thursday will reach an entirely new and broader audience.

My only advice is to pick up this album immediately and bask in what is the brilliance of Thursday. No band will be able to ever reach the heights that Thursday has.