Thursday - War All the Time

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Free Music Notes for War All the Time

Free Music Review: Watching emo burn up in flames....
Hit: 5 Stars

Well, it just keeps gettin' funnier. I bought the cd and within a month, it was in possession of my drummer, who'll listen to anything with a fast beat. I never wanted to hear it again.

So at that point, I was done with emo. Little did I know that something good would ever come of it. It wasn't until January of '04 that I heard about "screamo." Sure, you can get all technical and try to lable it post-hardcore revolutionist punk, or acid trip-hop blues fusion, or whatever else they call it, but 'screamo' just works.

A local cd store was going out of business, and I picked up Thursday's "War All The Time" because it was $5 and the tracks looked cool. It looked like a concept album. That it was.

It took a couple days, but it quickly became the revitalizing fuel for my musical gas tank. I had gotten so tired of the slow thud-rock of bands I used to love, with Staind leading the pack. Well, the old order is fading as is evident by Thursday's WATT.

The great thing about Thursday is that they are a total package band. You're not just getting great lyrics or a heavy sound, or just an image to cling to. They have it all. The songs are deeply meaningful, the guitars are soaringly fast and accurate, and the course of each song is driven down all kinds of tangents that lead to the central point behind the poetry. The lyrics are tightly packed, but carefully. I hate bands that awkwardly cram a gazillion lyrics into the wrong places. You can tell right away that Thursday wrote the music in total syncronicity with the vocals. Nothing sounds hurried and jagged. It's the smoothest use of vocals I've heard yet in a screamo band.

I should also mention that 'screamo' is more finely tuned by Thursday, as they've proven that you don't have to be arrogantly loud and brash to bullhorn the industry. They have finess in every song, whether it be the accurately timed speed-guitar patterns in the title track or the clean tone of the overlapping and intricate guitar parts in "Signals Over The Air."

Let's not forget that each member of the band contributes wholey to the overall sound. The bass player pushes the limits of what he can do without trying to steal the spotlight, and the drummer's style is so syncopated and up-tempo that without him, you very well might have had another Limp B**chkit.

I'm sorry, that was an insult. Thursday could never be that bad. They'd have to learn how to put the word "Thursday" into every song. And this whole post-punk movement wouldn't take that too well.

So, bottom line is this: if you believed in emo, give it a rest. It's just pop music with guitars. But if you want to hear something fresh by a band that's carried by it's talent rather than it's production value and regard for what the general youth votes for on MTV, then give Thursday a try.

I'm voting the title track, War All The Time, as the first track you should listen to from beginning to end if you've never heard of this band, or even this genre.

So let's sit back and watch emo burn up like the fart in the wind that it was. Something better is crawling out of the ashes.

And with that, a quote from "Marches & Maneuvers," which builds up for awhile as a small isntrumental and eventually turns into the heaviest track on the album. It later cycles through several phases before this last slow, melodic part.

"we've synthesized a compound to treat this conscience, it's:

one part loss,
one part no sleep,
one part the gun shot we heard,
one part the screams mistaken for laughter,
one part everything after,
one part love,
one part stepping out of the driving rain,
one part parting ways,

in the cold apartment, don't look back,
just keep running down the stairs.
do you hear the footsteps?
can you hear voices in the traffic, communiques in the attic?
they say, in time, all this will heal.
we will rebuild and these broken arms will mend themselves in our embrace."

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