Today I am going to write about an album that changed my life:
The Illusion of Safety.
I had this habit of judging an album by its cover. I must have been 23 or so and I was at Just Music, the local music store in my hometown of Longview, Washington. I had been playing in a band with friends called Empty Skies about a year before. Punk was new to me. AFI, Death by Stereo, Opeth, In Flames, and of course Tool dominated my listening experience although none of them really had the accessibility that I wanted in a band. Empty Skies was bludgeoning, rhythmically simple, and not what I wanted. I knew I didn't want to go back to that. I'd known the bass player for a while (Jason), and I had just met the drummer (they had played together in a band, X-It 49). I loved the energy and skill from this kid, just 16. I definitely wanted to play with him more in the future.
Thrice's TIOS completely floored me. It had a decent amount of technicality, punk energy, short songs that were fairly dynamic, and catchy vocals mixed with screams. It was the band I'd been waiting for. It was the band I wanted to be in. There can be no doubt of the influence this band would have on my musical interests. I couldn't stop listening to it.
From the opening dissonances of "Kill Me Quickly," to the breakdown and conclusion of "The Beltsville Crucible," I was completely absorbed. While I loved it for a long time, it's not my favorite Thrice album. I jogged Lake Sacajawea to this album more than any other, and seconded only by Thursday's Full Collapse and Rise Against's Revolutions Per Minute.
Other music news.
Meh? The only metal album of note for me thus far is Riverside's Shrine of New Generation Slaves, and it's not amazing to me.
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