New Jersey natives and post-core pioneers waited three years to put out their latest release, A City By The Light Divided. Shady rumors of the band breaking up circled in between War All The Time and A City By The Light Divided. As the band stood silent during these rumors, many fans didn’t know what to think. Finally, when A City By The Light Divided was released, it didn’t matter what happened with all the rumors and the time constraint, what mattered was the music.
The first single of the album, Counting 5-4-3-2-1 is more like previous radio-friendly Thursday singles, such as Signals Over the Air. That by no means suggests that it isn’t a quality listen, because much like all of Thursday’s songs, it is indeed a unique piece of art, and not short of serious emotional sentiment with intuitive musical skill. The song is a reference to lead singer Geoff Rickly’s high school friend whose life was taken by a train. When I saw Thursday about two years ago at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, Rickly announced to the crowd, “This isn’t just music to me, this is my life.” This can be seen in all of Thursday’s albums, including their latest release, A City By The Light Divided.
So with much emotion and heart, this album is not much different then previous releases. They substituted a lot of screaming parts for more melodic breakdowns that make these certain parts just as intense as the screaming once did. A more melodic transformation with the regular Thursday repertoire, A City By The Light Divided is a mature alternative to previous Thursday albums but takes some getting used to.
release date: Tuesday, May 2, 2006
