War All the Time
Thursday
Island Records

(4.25)

I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love
My Chemical Romance
Eyeball Records

For lead singer Geoff Rickly, Thursday’s Island Records debut, War All the Time, is possibly the most aptly titled album ever.

Borrowed from a reference author/poet Charles Bukowski once made to love, War All the Time is an appropriate description of everyday human interaction and reportedly the emotional state Rickly found himself in prior to the record’s release.

Rickly has also begun to spread his musical vision further than the confines of his band. With My Chemical Romance’s first full-length record debut, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, Rickly officially places his production seal of approval on another band’s work.

As a band, Thursday has made a name for itself as a sincere and desperate emo-core group concerned with the dichotomies between light and dark, love and loss. The band’s first two records, Waiting and Full Collapse, were both experiments in alienation, filled with sharply pointed critiques of modern American life.

To say that War All the Time is an increase in both style and capacity is to grossly understate the band’s current level. War All the Time is the maturation of an already mature style.

As opposed to its contemporaries, who define art through the eyes of an ex-lover or who emote more than they actually feel, Thursday has always been a band whose allegiance held first to the music and second to itself.

Never was this more apparent than when Rickly succumbed to an emotional breakdown sometime right before the release of War All the Time.

Convinced that the songs he had written were worthless and the was record futile, Rickly began to seriously doubt his lot in life. But his bandmates convinced him to stick it out and his record label let him re-record some of the songs that he was unhappy with.

The result? Depends who you ask. Rickly still feels the album to be shaky, but he is warming up to it.

As well he should. This album is by far the most personal for Rickly—a departure from the predominantly culturally oriented Full Collapse—as it focuses primarily on love. Thursday has taken the subject matter of broken hearts and dreams that has acted as the muse for so many new-age rockers and has combined it with a well-developed sense of music to create a scathing and wonderful record.

The album jumps with life and utilizes so many sound techniques that it almost seems myopic to define it as post-punk rock. The synthesized orchestration in the background to several key tracks and the surreal breakdowns that have become trademarks of Thursday’s sound help to make War All the Time a superb exercise in emotional exploration.

Key tracks on the album include “M. Shepard,” the biting and scornful look at the issues of prejudice and culturally ingrained animosity; “War All the Time,” a heart-pounding look at the letdown of love; and the MTV2 Buzzworthy song “Signals Over the Air,” what Rickly has said to be an abstraction of a very abusive relationship.

My Chemical Romance’s album is an extension of these emotions with a less melodic and more chaotic sound. The band’s predisposition to bats and the occult is apparent on tracks like the lacerating “I Will Never Let Vampires Hunt You Down,” but the songs always maintain the dire tone of self-loathing that Thursday fans adore.

Combining the feelings of loss and disillusionment that flow through the lyrical veins of War All the Time with some of the most excitable vocals heard recently, My Chemical Romance’s record helps to create a niche for the contrasted and complicated sound that Rickly and his bandmates are forging, if only slightly less successfully.

eryn@red-mag.com