Thrice - Identity Crisis/The Illusion of Safety (Album)
When I first picked up the double album set, curiosity and the need to immerse myself in the full Thrice experience led me to page through the album sleeves only to discover, much to my disgust that these two albums were close to the 7 year old mark. Now feeling my age, I soon realized that reviewing these albums would be a bit of a nostalgic experience, having not listened to these particular tracks in quite some time, I was interested to see how my ears would react to previously loved songs, now that I was a bit older and hopefully wiser.
Identity crisis is the Orange County foursome's first album, and truly embodies the youthful passionate drive of a fresh new band. If you expect a studio perfected sound this album will fail to impress. However, the almost crude and blemished sound of a first album can sometimes capture a side of the band which is usually sadly edited out. Both albums have the raw-boned feel that Thrice have lost on newer collections of work.
These boys know how to choose a first track and Identity crisis, good enough to lead it's name to the entire album, hits you like a freight train. Thrice's signature buzz saw riffs and mournful wailing vocals already make a lasting impression on their maiden album. The juxtaposition of quiet sombre acoustic intros to the tracks, Phoenix Ignition and In your hands, only adds to the pained emotional of the entire album. This theme of angst and the fact that some tracks converge almost on the edge of pop rock have probably rightly caused Thrice to be labelled as emo. But just when I start to lose faith in the harder side of this album they redeem themselves with winners like Torch to end all torches. Thrice even at the start of their careers have managed to generate complex rhythms intertwined with sporadic bursts of metal riffage that you can't help but love.
The Illusion of Safety is Thrice's second album, and again opens with a strong track oozing all the angst the band can squeeze out of lead vocalist Dustin Kensrue. This album is progressively harder than the first with fewer pop sounding chorus lines and melodies. Amazingly, the band manage to inject the same emotional angst into each track but by mid-disk the wailing vocals which could ignite a holocaust starts to grind the senses and numb any anger you may have initially felt. The guitar work however is a redemption and remains superb throughout. Luckily, the tracks are insanely short, at the most only 3 minutes, which helps prevent complete numbing of the emotional centres of your brain. The band shows more maturity in this album compared to their first which is evident in the clever composition of tracks like See you in the Shadows, building the listener up to the chorus and finally exploding with violent rigor. Even though it's been ages since I actually listened to this album, I still feel it's Thrice's best work.
These albums are almost stereotypical of what the hardcore emo genre has become known as, whether this label is correct or not. I feel a lot of newer bands may have been influenced by these two early disks, which is not necessarily a bad thing. No hardcore fan can call their collection complete without this set.
