Thrice has never really been a mainstream rock act, and with its latest effort, "The Alchemy Index: Vols. III and IV," the band has made it clear that it has absolutely no intentions of gaining pop notoriety.
The unfortunate side of the story is that once upon a time, in the early 2000s, Thrice was one of the premier post-hardcore hard rock acts around, with brutal riffs, perfectly mixed screaming and melodic choruses from frontman Dustin Kensrue. Thrice's breakthrough album, "The Illusion of Safety" (2002), and the even more successful and ambitious "The Artist in the Ambulance" (2003) were guitar-driven rock albums with brief glimpses of smooth melodies. "The Artist in the Ambulance" earned the band its first charting single, "All That's Left."
Following the relative success of "Artist in the Ambulance," Thrice spent a significant amount of time in the studio working on "Vheissu," an album that signaled a huge change in direction for the band. While riffs and pounding rock drumbeats had driven all the group's previous efforts, "Vheissu" was a much more atmospheric and elegiac album, full of slow (and surprisingly riff-less) mediocre rock ballads. While adventurous, the album floundered in a sea of overwrought art-rock pretentiousness.
The "Alchemy Index" series, a group of four EPs each named after an element of nature, finds the band continuing down the path of drawn-out over-complication.
To begin with, the EPs came in batches of two, with the "Water" and "Fire" EPs having been released in 2007, even though each song had been recorded at the same time. The physical album is even more ridiculous, as it comes on two separate discs, each with six songs and only twenty minutes of music on each disc. While it is understandable that the band wanted the EPs to be understood as autonomous, one can't help but think that this was a massively wasteful measure.
Then comes the worst part of all, especially for old-school, "Artist in the Ambulance"-era Thrice: The two discs sound nearly identical. After listening through the "Air" EP and swapping out discs in the stereo, a passerby noted, "Is this all one long song?" And truthfully, it very well could have been.
The opening track on "Air," entitled "Broken Lungs," is by far the best song on either EP, but it seems to be brushed aside as an afterthought rather than embraced as a slightly different, yet familiar sound to Thrice. Each track after "Broken Lungs" gets continually more bland, with Kensrue's throaty scream going completely to waste on sappy, ballad-style chorus after sappy, ballad-style verse.
"A Song for Milly Michaelson," "Daedalus" and "As the Crow Flies," the next three tracks on "Air," all disintegrate into a reverb and digital-delay laden mush, with each track bleeding into the next. After a few listens, it's still difficult for even an astute listener to tell where the song breaks were actually intended to be. During the mixing sessions for the EP, the studio motto was most certainly, "If it sounds bland, add more echo." Unfortunately, while this may have worked for Phil Spector and The Beach Boys, it does not work out for Thrice in the least.
With high hopes that the "Earth" EP would make up for the disappointment of "Air," the listener goes into the EP, fingers crossed, only to be let down again. While "Moving Mountains," the first track on "Earth," is certainly heartfelt and endearing, it is lost in the sea of mediocrity around it. "Moving Mountains" would have been perfect as an acoustic and personal interlude on a louder and more in-your-face album, but in the dual EP format, it loses all its potency.
Beyond that, nothing on either EP is worth mentioning. For those who enjoy mildly pretentious indie-rock, this album is still hit-or-miss. For those of us who enjoy peeking into a full range of rock 'n' roll emotions, "The Alchemy Index: Vols. III and IV" is a serious disappointment, especially from a band that had so much going for it just a few years ago.
