Thursday is kind of a hardcore/alternative rock band, Envy is kind of a hardcore/noise metal outfit – Thursday is from New Jersey, Envy is from Japan, but Thursday must listen to Envy because they approached the U.S. label for Envy, Temporary Residence Records, in 2006 and suggested doing a split record. A couple years later it was done and unleashed on eardrums everywhere.
The album features four songs by Thursday – really only 3 songs and one song remixed by Anthony Molina of Mercury Rev – and three songs by Envy. The Thursday songs are the strongest tracks from the band in a few years. Envy apparently brought out the best in them. The harsh guitars, beating drums and intensity of Thursday struck me more than any of the Thursday songs since some garbage, Full Collapse. Thursday is a band that crafts catchy rockers that are edgy and overdriven and have some scream punctuations and crashing drums. They had forgotten how to punctuate their sweet progressions and bleed their intensity on the album, but Envy – a tremendously powerful rock outfit with crashing noise and delicate feedback skills – seems to have kicked some of their power over to Thursday. Which bodes well for Thursday.
“As He Climbed The Dark Mountain” and “An Absurd And Unrealistic Dream of Peace” are classic Thursday – driving, intense, spitting rockers reminiscent of bands like Boy Sets Fire, At the Drive In, and Planes Mistaken for Stars with Geoff Ricky’s falsetto singing. However, “In Silence” is an instrument track, that is moody, dark and crushing, and is remixed by Molina as an even spacier, trippy, fire bomb of a song – called Appeared And Was Gone” – and it leads perfectly to the three Envy songs.
Envy as usual bounces between intricate little ballets of death and all out apocalyptic disturbances with their songs “An Umbrella Fallen Into Fiction,” “Isolation Of A Light Source” and “Pure Birth And Loneliness.” Although, “Umbrella…” actually starts off a bit peppier than normal for this sweaty, cloudy, kneecap-breaking band – who’s sound is similar to Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You Black Emperor mixed with Shai Hulud. The song is about seven minutes long and is mostly builds slowly to a powerful burst. The final two songs are a tug of war between unsettled peace and evil barking metal windstorms.
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