Review - Thursday – No Devolucion

Thursdays latest release has proved somewhat elusive to me as of late, as I have been trying to listen to this for about a week now, to no avail. With it streaming on the bands Myspace, it gave me a chance to listen to this at long last . . . until my internet cut out. I then finally got everything sorted to start sampling, to find that only the first three tracks were streaming, and the rest were just 30 second clips, which is not what the news articles on the music sites said! It was widely publicised that No Devolucion was streaming online ahead of its release next Monday (11/4) but where, at this time, remains a myth! So off I trekked to youtube, to listen to the rest of the album, so I could formulate this review.

And what a strange record it is.

I am still quite uneasy in reviewing this as I think back to it, hard pushed to tell whether it was weird, or just plain genius. One thing is for sure though, it is Thursday sounding like nothing they have ever released before. Gone are the post hardcore influences, where they trail blazed through the scene and redefined it in the late 90’s and early 00’s. What we have is a release that is soaking in brooding and dark, sinister influences, and atmospheric twists and turns. It very much feels like a prog record in places, and sees Thursday pushing the barrier further than ever before. They often sound like latter day Thrice in the process, and considering I am not too keen on latter day Thrice, I found this strangely enthralling.

The first thing you notice is that there are no out and out singles, and therefore individually, the songs don’t add up to much. But listen to the album in its entirety, and in its own context, it is unnerving, almost uneasy listening, but there is something haunting and in a way, mesmerising, about this as a record. I imagine that it would take you to another world if you listened to it in the dark late one night, and although Geoff Rickly doesn’t sound like Geoff Rickly here (it could well be another vocalist, his voice is that hard to pin down), he and his New Jersey brothers have done something quite remarkable with this.

It is not easy to pinpoint what though, but it is unlike anything I have listened to in some time.

Empty Glass is particularly dark and depressing, and there are moments where the undercurrent changes into blasts of post hardcore screams, in a twisted and chilling manner. Throughout though, there is a haunting sense to the tracks on display here, devoid of true highlights, but it is either a brilliant body of work, or a terrible body of work, depending on what you hear when you listen to it.

As such, it is hard to categorise and pigeonhole, and I cannot really mark it fairly on that. It could easily be a 0/10 album, as well as it could be a 10/10. It will definately divide opinion. I would be interested to see what a second listen does for this, and album closer Stay True is a chilling and fitting climax to that which has gone before it.

For now though, I will edge on the side of genius, reflected in my mark.

7/10