Thrice: Understanding The Elements

Thrice may be best known as forerunners of the post-hardcore genre, but if 2005's Vheissu didn't do the trick, their ambitious new album project, The Alchemy Index Vols. I & II: Fire And Water, will undoubtedly turn more than just the heads of angry screamo kids. The record is the first half of a series of four EPs based around the elements of nature: fire, water, earth and air. ChartAttack recently spoke with frontman Dustin Kensrue and guitarist Teppei Teranishi about their latest opus.

ChartAttack: How did you begin writing for each individual element?
Dustin Kensrue: Originally, we had loose ideas of what we wanted them to be. Fire would be kind of angry, Air being more atmospheric, Earth being stripped down and Water being all electronic. It was a bit stricter at that point, where we didn't want electronic stuff on any of the other records, and so forth. The concept was kind of controlling us. After that, we were focusing more on what the mood was, trying to capture the feeling instead of the instruments themselves.

Teppei Teranishi: At the beginning, it was a long thought process about the elements and what we thought would fit them musically and sonically. We figured out all the themes, then took it from there. We all did a lot of writing towards the actual elements, which is something we've never done, writing towards a theme. Usually it's like, "OK, I'll play guitar and see what I come up with." But this time around it was like, "Let's sit down and try and make the most watery sounding thing." That was interesting, writing towards a goal or theme.

How did you decide on the sound of each element?
TT: I think it was important to sit down at the beginning and iron out the ideas of what would be Water, what would be Fire and so on.

DK: We knew which direction to push towards. We didn't know what the songs would end up being at all. In the beginning, I kind of envisioned a regular album, but having more experimental songs as opposed to having just a song-based record. But then we just started writing great songs.

Vheissu really felt like you were going headfirst into the experimental side of things, but Fire And Water seems to be going in that direction even more. Was that a conscious effort, to distance yourselves from a certain sound?
TT: It's not a conscious effort with us, it's just a natural progression for the band. It's a natural representation of our musical tastes. We always have the attitude, like, "Screw it, we'll do what we want." We do get some backlash from people hating it and not getting what we're doing, but that's what's fun about being in a band, trying to do new stuff.

Teppei, you produced the record on your own. What was that like for you?
TT: We did all the production and everything in our own studio. It was a lot of fun and a huge learning experience. It was something I always wanted to try. It was kind of intense, I guess. That was interesting, pulling double-duty. It's hard to play both roles, trying to be objective about how things sound and also trying to be a band member. It's fun being able to experiment, especially doing it on our own, like on that first track on the Fire record, where all the instruments are just [turned all the way up] and blown out. That's something most producers wouldn't be comfortable doing, but we just thought it sounded cool.

Fire and Water have very distinct sounds of their own. What can we expect from Earth and Air?
TT: Earth is just really stripped down, a lot of acoustic instruments, like acoustic guitars and pianos. We have some wind instruments like saxophone and clarinet. Air is a little more traditional rock, but a bit more ethereal and atmospheric, not really so heavy. There's a song on there that's really jazzy, with Riley playing brushes and Ed playing upright bass.

DK: Air is really diverse. It's very balanced. That doesn't mean it sounds like stuff we've done before, but it incorporates elements from the other "elements." There's heavier stuff, electronic stuff, pretty stuff. It's all over the place, but there's a certain energy to it. I don't know. There's some really beautiful stuff on there. I like the Earth stuff a lot. It's probably my favourite one of the four. It's the one that appeals to me the most, personally. There's bluesy stuff on there, jazzy stuff.

It seems like these EPs have opened up a lot of doors for you guys to try new things with your performances. Have you considered playing in specific settings for each record?
TT: That would be a cool thing to do, I just don't know how plausible it is. You need a pretty different space for every element. We're trying to figure out how we're gonna do this Water stuff, trying to integrate it with the Fire stuff and our older songs. We've talked about doing entire acoustic sets and stuff, so we'll see how that goes.

DK: It's almost like when you're really hungry, but there's way too much on the menu. We'll see.