Honestly, it never even bore thought that Horizons / East might have had a companion release in the wings. It makes sense to with that name; it’s just that…well, it’s not an album you tend to think of very much. Of all of Thrice’s grittier, gravellier works that have comprised their last decade of output, Horizons / East has done the least to stay afloat. Not that it’s bad, but a more subdued feel—and the effort of being pitted against To Be Everywhere Is To Be Nowhere that every subsequent Thrice album has had to shoulder—left it a tad outclassed. Plus, it came out in 2021, so any hope of a quick follow-up to redirect some momentum towards it has been soundly dashed by now.
It’s good, then, that none of that is too important to Horizons / West. For the most part, it’s a ‘sequel’ insofar as it has a kinda-similar name. Otherwise, it’s another Thrice album embodying their modern standards and comfortably pipping its predecessor in the process. More than that, though, there’s a feel to this one that comes from a great Thrice album, something they’re well-accustomed to, and which it’s never unpleasant to see more of. The gold standard of this current phase remains To Be Everywhere Is To Be Nowhere, but Horizons / West is closer than you might anticipate.
It’s an unquantifiable feel, but it’s there in absolute spades, right across the board. As Blackout starts things off, it looms in deeper and deeper, all deliberate tremors of guitar and Dustin Kensrue’s voice sounding as though it’s coming out of a cliff face, before a snarling post-hardcore epilogue sees that cliff crumble away. It’s textbook Thrice brilliance in all of its forms. It’s also the bedrock of the entirety of the album, as Thrice’s stoic, powdering form of rock music only continues to appreciate. Gnash entirely lives up to its name as a coal-powered garage-rock pulveriser, topped off with Thrice’s own supply of rubble. Later, Albatross fittingly soars while remaining craggy and weathered, and The Dark Glow is like wading through tar in the driving rain, the slowest of burns with the weight of the experience emphasised whenever possible. In a good way, of course.
In pieces, Horizons / West might feature some of the most concentrated examples of Thrice’s weight in their last 10 years of accentuating it. The decision to thrust that forward here feels all the more conscious. Again, Kensrue is as rugged a frontman as you can get now, shown at its greatest in his lower, throatier register that splits through a sparse instrumental palette, like the flickering, programmed percussion of Undertow that’s not all that far from post-rock. The dual MVP this time, however, is Eddie Breckenridge on bass, for how much standout work he gets to all across Horizons / West. With a full front-and-centre role that’s loud and commanding, there’s some incredible work here, and variety within it. There’s a menacing, churning stalk that Breckenridge cuts through Albatross; conversely, Crooked Shadows and Distant Suns are more playful and borderline lithe (the latter especially, pairing him with his older brother Riley’s nimble drumming).
As a full unit, though, Thrice rarely put a foot wrong on Horizons / West. In the stakes of raw, real rock music that (sans the tiniest mite of production trickery) has been forged out of these four guys’ hands, there’s not a whole lot to complain about. Unitive/West might be the only real source for that, a very meditative closer built from glassy clanks and chimes, Kensrue’s burr at its lowest tremble, and three minutes of atmospheric hums to crawl to the finish. Less does it feel like another moment of intense, intentional deliberacy, and more like Thrice trying to feed that through a coda and not getting all the way there. Coming directly after the proggy peaks and valleys of Vesper Light that already has the extended length for a mighty closer, it’s a little anticlimactic.
However, that also means that all it takes to get a truly exceptional album out of Horizons/West is six or seven minutes shaved off the end. Do that, factor in the absolute triumph that Thrice have cultivated everywhere else, and you’re good to go! What works the most is how Thrice lean into an unerring simplicity associated with rock music, and dial it up to such dizzying heights. It’s arguably the most that’s been done since To Be Everywhere Is To Be Nowhere, and thus it’s little wonder that Horizons / West is their best offering since that turning point. ‘Reinvigoration’ isn’t quite the right term, though; To Be Everywhere… was such a pivotal moment for Thrice that it’s hard to see them replicating its effects outside of another fully seismic shift. But for rediscovering and rebottling the magic it unearthed, it doesn’t get much better than Horizons / West.
For fans of: Manchester Orchestra, Alexisonfire, Hot Water Music
‘Horizons / West’ by Thrice is released on 3rd October on Epitaph Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
