Thursday: War All The Time : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Of all the passionate, soul-baring young guitar bands slogged together under the emo heading, Thursday are among the darkest and most powerful, and their fourth album brims over with all the jagged guitars and bad thoughts a bunch of suburban New Jersey kids can muster. Singer Geoff Rickly voices a cavalcade of complaints in his full-bodied, agitated wail, but despite the title, War All the Time doesn't reflect the band's political sentiments so much as Rickly's dim view of personal relationships ("The distance between us will rupture/In our hearts the disease won't touch us"). If Thursday want to hit it big, they'll need to develop their melodic side, but with War All the Time, they've produced an album that's desperate and intense enough to resonate outside their corner of the underground.

CHRISTIAN HOARD
(RS 932, October 2, 2003)