Island
2003
War All the Time
About This Album
While the number of youthful groups of men in form-fitting T-shirts performing pensive, often anguished post-hardcore music punctuated with arty lyrical references has become overgrown and/or ridiculous in the past few years, New Jersey's Thursday deserves props for putting all of its fragile eggs in a huge, well-appointed major-label basket. War All the Time, its Island debut, arrives grandiose and gatefolded, with moody, urban impressionist artwork and a thank-you list that lasts for miles. Helmed by longtime Thursday producer Sal Villanueva and mixed by Rumblefish, the album rocks on the dynamics between singing and screaming, between rage unleashed and thoughts cast inward. Lyrically, the band's earnestness is admirable. "In the spring, you will bloom, like her heart"; "We'll douse ourselves in gasoline and hang our bodies from the lampposts" -- coupled with musings on suicide and life's never-ending grind, vocalist Geoff Rickly and his mates are providing diary material for 10,000 lonely teenagers. But despite its righteous gospel, startling dynamic shifts, and hurtling minor-chord choruses, War inevitably begins to resemble one long, 40-minute song.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4,6 and 9)

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