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California band Thrice have always stood out against their post-hardcore contemporaries thanks to a rich experimental streak that has seen them take such gutsy moves as releasing a four-part, 24-song-cycle double album The Alchemy Index based on the elements earth, wind, fire and water. So it comes as no surprise that their seventh album is equally weighty.
They’ve moved even further from their initial rawness by adding doses of both grungy, Black Hole Sun-style psychedelia and clinical, crunching Tool- or Botch-like drive to opener Yellow Belly, Dustin Kensrue’s ragged, emotional vocals contrasting beautifully.
Major/Minor is a spiralling, complex work stuffed with Biblical imagery, especially in the impassioned Words In The Water and Listen Through Me, which expose Kensrue’s religious convictions without ever going too far and beating the less godly of us over the head with a copy of the New Testament.
The result is a heavy, dignified and often truly beautiful work that places Thrice ever more defiantly into a category of one.
