If you happened to come of age at the turn of the century in Orange County, Calif., then you likely felt the buzz that was generating around Irvine’s up-and-coming rock outfit, Thrice.
The fourpiece — through their 1999 EP known as First Impressions, as well as their 2000 LP, Identity Crisis — had already developed a ravenous local following for their genre fusion of punk and metal that’s most commonly regarded as post-hardcore. I witnessed this devotion firsthand at the Virgin Megastore-hosted release show for their second LP, The Illusion of Safety (2002). Seeing 500-plus teenagers and young adults sing, scream and mosh against the backdrop of an upscale outdoor shopping center in Costa Mesa, Calif. is an image that’s forever seared into my brain.
A major label bidding war quickly erupted in order to invest in the collective future of vocalist/guitarist Dustin Kensrue, multi-instrumentalist Teppei Teranishi and the fraternal rhythm section of bassist Eddie Breckenridge and drummer Riley Breckenridge. Island Records emerged victorious, and despite being crunched for time, Thrice’s 2003 major label debut, The Artist in the Ambulance, became a foundational record to the post-hardcore subgenre.
After they fulfilled the touring cycle for Artist, Thrice made one of the most consequential decisions of their career. They began to veer away from the style of music that brought them to the dance, adding an experimental twist to their post-hardcore bedrock. They brought in numerous instruments and electronic elements to expand their sonic palette, resulting in what is now considered to be their masterwork, Vheissu (2005).
However, the fan response at the time was all over the map. Some of us greeted the record with rapture, while others bemoaned that it wasn’t a more direct extension of Illusion and Artist. But none of the band members ever flinched over the divide that formed over their pre- and post-Vheissu sound.
“We just did what felt right to us,” drummer Riley Breckenridge tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of the Oct. 3 release of their new album, Horizons/West. “It’s always been about exploration and pushing ourselves and incorporating new influences, and it would just feel dishonest to abandon that true part of the band.”
Thrice wasn’t done zagging as they soon committed themselves to their most ambitious project to date, a self-produced four-volume concept record that’s musically and lyrically inspired by the four classical elements of fire, water, air and earth. Vheissu may have gotten the ball rolling, but 2007’s The Alchemy Index Vols. I & II: Fire & Water and 2008’s The Alchemy Index Vols. II & IV: Air & Earth fully reset the band’s sound going forward.
Fire offered an evolved take on their post-hardcore calling card, but Water was largely electronic, resulting in a haunting yet serene setting. Air consisted of atmospheric rock that fine tuned their ability to make powerful music without relying on distortion, and Earth was a mix of folk and Americana, something Kensrue had begun to explore via his 2007 solo record, Please Come Home. (In the full-band interview below, Kensrue addresses the possibility of doing more volumes of Alchemy.)
The group also shed their prior associations in the process. That included all the vaguely reminiscent bands that were signed in their wake, as well as Island Records itself. The regime that inked them was, for the most part, long gone, and the subsequent leadership didn’t know what to do with four stylistically different EPs. So they negotiated an exit that ultimately allowed the band to release their sprawling record in two parts via indie label, Vagrant Records.
In response to the complexity of The Alchemy Index, Thrice followed it up with another self-produced LP, Beggars (2009), their most spartan, jam-oriented rock record. Unfortunately, it leaked online well ahead of schedule, putting a relative damper on that cycle.
2011’s Major/Minor ended up being received as a grunge record, although that wasn’t necessarily by design. The LP also marked a crossroads for the band as familial responsibilities, personal losses, fatigue and new opportunities prompted an indefinite hiatus after wrapping their 2012 “farewell” tour. Luckily, their inactivity lasted only two-and-a-half years as each member gained a newfound appreciation for the band during its absence.
In 2016, Thrice returned with To Be Everywhere Is to Be Nowhere, featuring what turned into their most popular song, “Black Honey.” The LP straddled the line between the rock leanings of their more recent records with the post-hardcore elements of their past. If you’re unfamiliar with Thrice, To Be Everywhere is a perfectly valid entry point. 2018’s Palms then offered a buffet of Thrice’s various sounds, highlighted by their most beautiful song to date, “Beyond the Pines.”
2021 saw the release of Horizons/East, the soulful first half of a two-part release. Horizons/West was originally slated for a 2022 release until the temptation to celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Artist in the Ambulance became too undeniable. Thrice always had a few hang-ups over the audio mix of their classic 2003 record, so they re-recorded Artist for a 2023 release and played it in full at sold-out shows across the U.S. and Europe.
On Oct. 3, the aforementioned Horizons/West finally hits shelves via Epitaph Records, becoming the band’s 12th LP during their 25-year run. It’s a grab bag of every Thrice era to date, and a few of its standout tracks include “The Dark Glow,” “Distant Suns” and “Vesper Light.” The first single, “Gnash,” is also their heaviest song since Artist.
All in all, Kensrue has evolved into one of the finest voices of his generation. His vocal dexterity allows him to go from a lion-like roar to a weary whisper or a rousing cry at the drop of a dime. The band’s renaissance man, Teranishi, has a knack for urgent, jagged melodies on lead guitar, but perhaps his greatest gift is restraint. He always knows how much or how little to play in order to best serve a song. And the brothers Breckenridge — who contribute far more to the band’s musical compositions than one might expect from a rhythm section — have routinely found the ideal balance between power and intricacy.
Despite this lengthy effort to establish Thrice’s bona fides, there remains a feeling that the band is overlooked or under-appreciated. Case in point and much to their bewilderment, they have decades’ worth of cinematic music that has yet to be tapped by music supervisors. None of their songs have ever been used as a needle drop during a movie or TV series, nor have they fielded any offers to score a narrative project. The closest they’ve gotten to the entertainment industry was when they received a few name-checks from Thrice fan Margot Robbie during various interviews. Some Thrice stickers have also popped up on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia by way of an initiated set decorator, and the WWE once used “Black Honey” to promote an event.
Thus, for a long-running band that flirted with mainstream success during Artist and To Be Everywhere, they still have that underground quality that captivated me outside Virgin Megastore all those years ago. But what does success even mean for a rock band in 2025, especially a working-class, do-it-yourself one like Thrice? Some of their contemporaries may have reached higher heights, but Thrice is still here when so many others aren’t. To have such longevity with the same lineup, as well a modest, but mighty, fan base, that is the mountaintop.
“I feel like there are a lot of people out there who would like our band. They either don’t know who we are, or they had an idea of what we were 25 years ago,” Kensrue says. “Our newer stuff might make sense for what they were into then and now. But I don’t think we think about ‘our due,’ per se. That stuff is so random, and there’s so many amazing bands that no one ever listens to.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, the founding members of Thrice reflect on their history and the inner workings of their newest record, Horizons/West.
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“The Dark Glow” is my favorite track on your new record, Horizons/West, and one of my first thoughts was that it’s “Backdraft” meets “Open Water.” I then realized that there’s always this habitual rush among Thrice fans to categorize your new music according to your past work, and I’m just as guilty of it. “It’s 50 percent Beggars, 25 percent Alchemy Index and 25 percent Vheissu.”
DUSTIN KENSRUE (Vocalist/Guitarist) (Laughs.) Yeah.
How often do you actually reference your catalog of sounds when you’re writing and/or recording?
DUSTIN KENSRUE I don’t think we reference stuff that way very often. We definitely don’t while writing. We’re usually pulling little references from other bands. We’ll make little connections, like, “That part feels like Colour Revolt and a little bit like Cave In. It’s Cave In Revolt.” It’s just something you do so you remember which part you’re actually referencing, but I don’t think we usually reference [our back catalog]. For a while, we were really being reactive to the last thing we’d done, so we would say, “Not like that. Something else.” (Laughs.)
Thrice’s Riley Breckenridge (Drummer), Dustin Kensrue (Vocalist/Guitarist), Teppei Teranishi (Multi-instrumentalist), Eddie Breckenridge (Bassist)
Atiba Jefferson
Whenever you’re dialing in tones during recording, no one ever says to lean toward Beggars or any other past record for a specific part?
DUSTIN KENSRUE No, and different people mixed all those past records too. We dialed tones in, but the way it ends up sounding is also because of who mixed it. Scott Evans, who’s mixed our more current stuff, might be an exception. He gets where we’re coming from in the first place, so he’s really just trying to keep a lot of that instinct. But all our tone and even energy references generally go outside the band and not into our own back catalog.
Horizons/West is a sequel to 2021’s Horizons/East, so that’s probably the one exception as you reference sounds and parts from the latter. Did you end up enjoying the challenge of bridging the two both sonically and lyrically?
DUSTIN KENSRUE Yeah, it was fun, especially lyrically. We decided to split the record partway through making the last record, Horizons/East. It was just Horizons at the time, and so I didn’t have a ton of time to end up theming /East as intensely as I wanted to. But knowing /West was coming, I had a couple of years to really ruminate and distill some of that. So it was actually a lot of fun, and I feel like it’s the most thematically rich, dense record we’ve done other than The Alchemy Index.
“Undertow” and “Holding On” were remnants from the /East session. Were they partially tracked during /East? Or were they still just demos?
DUSTIN KENSRUE Yeah, they were just in demo form.
You were originally going to release a version of /West in 2022, but then you pivoted to the 20th anniversary of The Artist in the Ambulance. You re-recorded that record and toured it quite extensively. What was Epitaph’s response when you announced your change in plans?
RILEY BRECKENRIDGE (Drummer) They were pretty supportive of it. I wasn’t privy to any conversations [otherwise], but it was super cool that they were alright with it. We did [The Artist in the Ambulance – Revisited] with a different label, and it threw a wrench in what they thought was the original plan. But they were supportive of it as far as I know. We didn’t get any pushback, really, and our manager didn’t say it was too difficult to broach that topic with them.
What I admire about you guys is how uncompromising you’ve always been. You moved away from the style that launched your career, and you never wavered when some fans bellyached. Your former tourmates, Face to Face, released what I still feel is their best record, Ignorance Is Bliss, and as soon as some fans protested their stylistic departure, they went right back to their tried-and-true sound. So why do you think you never succumbed to that type of pressure?
RILEY BRECKENRIDGE Initially, we just wanted to explore what we could do within our abilities and our creative influences, and I don’t think that ethos has ever changed. We never started the band to be like, “Well, we have to be a punk band, and we have to play with these bands and at these venues. That’s what we’re going to do, and we’ll just do it for as long as we can.” It’s always been about exploration and pushing ourselves and incorporating new influences, and it would just feel dishonest to abandon that true part of the band. We really didn’t have any lofty goals either. We just wanted to play shows and have fun making music and see what happened. So it wasn’t like we were aiming for this brass ring or something like that. We just did what felt right to us, and to abandon that now just seems like it would be antithetical to the whole project.
Even after Artist in the Ambulance – Revisited, there was an assumption among fans that playing those songs for sold-out crowds would influence you to make /West even heavier. And while there’s plenty of heavy on /West, you still didn’t go the way that people expected.
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE (Bassist) I would hope that we’re carrying on some of the energy that we had in the beginning and that people are actually attracted to that, whether they know it or not.
DUSTIN KENSRUE Yeah, the same impulse that created that earlier stuff is underneath the later stuff.
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE Right. Doing the same old stuff is a negative way of saying it, but if we tried to do that thing again, it would lead to something that I don’t think people would want because it didn’t come out of us honestly.
Eddie, your bass has become much more prominent on the Horizons records. That’s not to say that you haven’t driven songs in the past. “Cataracts” is one of my favorites. But even the tone is more pronounced. Knowing that Scott Evans’ mixing style emphasizes the bass, did you factor that quality into the writing of these songs?
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE I think so for some of them. Like Dustin mentioned, an early inspiration of ours was the band Cave In, and their bass player, Caleb Scofield, was a huge influence on me. Their style of music was really cool because it did allow the bass to push this melodic aspect of the band, and then the guitars can float or latch onto that. So I do feel like we’ve gravitated towards that through Cave In and other bands that have a similar vibe. No Knife and Frodus are other examples. But it’s fun when the bass isn’t just a supporting instrument. Of course, it’s fun for me, but I’m not the only one who’s writing these bass parts. The other guys are also writing bass parts at times, and some of my favorite songs are ones where I’m playing somebody else’s bass part. But I do think I found my tone in the last five years or so. I’ve become really happy with it. Scot then took that and found a good mix where you can hear everything, and it feels right. But, sometimes, I’m like, “Am I too loud, guys?”
DUSTIN KENSRUE In Scott and the band’s [text] thread, there’s a lot of memes about Ed’s bass tone.
THRICE (Laughs.)
TEPPEI TERANISHI (Multi-instrumentalist) Yeah, it’s become a thing with us. We’ll post Macho Man GIFs for Ed’s bass tone.
Thrice’s Eddie Breckenridge (Bassist) and Riley Breckenridge (Drummer)
Courtesy of Robbie Clark
You’re essentially the lead guitarist in certain spots like the choruses of “Crooked Shadows.”
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE Oh yeah.
And when “Vesper Light” breaks down, you come in with that Tool-esque riff before everyone else comes back in around you. It’s similar to how “The Abolition of Man” or “To Awake and Avenge the Dead” break down for Teppei to introduce a climactic lead line that everybody rejoins around. So it really seems like there was a concerted effort to spotlight you here.
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE I think it was just how we were all feeling. We weren’t going, “These couple records are going to be bass-heavy records.” It’s just that as the songs developed, we were like, “This sounds really good. This drives so that the guitars can do really cool, chunky things over it.” So maybe we’re just gravitating towards that kind of vibe currently.
TEPPEI TERANISHI We’re all collectively moving in that direction together. Like you said, the way we think about the bass now is that it can be almost like a lead instrument.
But the bass is not the only reason I consider this record to be an Eddie showcase. Are you the “lead vocalist” on the verses of “Vesper Light”? Was this another “Talking Through Glass / We Move Like Swing Sets” arrangement?
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE No, that’s Dustin.
You’re kidding me. I always think of “Silver Wings” when I think of Dustin’s falsetto, so why am I not recognizing him here?
DUSTIN KENSRUE I wonder if it’s the register that the falsetto is in. That might be why it sounds a little different. “Silver Wings” would be a pretty different register to where it’s almost a head voice kind of thing.
TEPPEI TERANISHI I think this is the first time that we’ve had your falsetto be the actual front-and-center lead vocal.
DUSTIN KENSRUE Yeah, it has never gone this long anywhere. It’s usually just little flourishes. But, for some reason, I’ve had multiple people bring up that “Vesper Light” sounds different than any other falsetto I’ve done. I really wasn’t trying to do it differently.
Thank you for saving me there by bringing up other people.
THRICE (Laughs.)
Teppei, there’s an expression, “jack of all trades, master of none,” but in your case, it’s really master of all.
THRICE (Laughs.)
DUSTIN KENSRUE That’s very true.
You’re not only a gifted guitar player, but you’re also a pianist, a luthier, a recording engineer and a leathersmith. I’m sure I’m missing a few other trades.
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE He skates well too.
Of course he does. As far as engineering, did you recognize early on that the economics of the band would benefit from you becoming a Swiss-army knife?
TEPPEI TERANISHI I don’t think that was necessarily the driving force behind it. I just had an interest in recording pretty early on, and Ed and I took a sound reinforcement class. It was basically a studio/live sound class at OCCA, and this was when the band was in its baby phases. I also interned at For the Record [studio] for a while, which is where we recorded Identity Crisis, so I’ve always just thought it was interesting.
Do you have a dream of walking into Fountain Valley’s Guitar Center and hearing someone play “Stairway to Heaven” on one of your guitars?
TEPPEI TERANISHI (Laughs.) No, I don’t think so. For right now, it’s definitely just a hobby. I’m making guitars for myself, and I’m enjoying that. I’ve made a small handful of guitars for other people, but it’s just friends and family. If I were to start making guitars for other people, I don’t think I would ever do it on a scale that was anything close to being mass produced.
Do you tend to write your lead parts after Dustin has established a scratch vocal? Do you prefer to dance in and around what he’s doing? Or does he sometimes work off of you as well?
TEPPEI TERANISHI It goes both ways. The way we come up with parts or write songs is pretty varied. For Horizons/West in particular, there was a decent amount of us just jamming and me coming up with stuff. But certain parts were fixed, and we would write around those original ideas.
DUSTIN KENSRUE In a sense, we think about a lot of the guitar parts less as “lead.” There are songs where a lead part takes over, but just like with the bass, we’re not super concerned with it interweaving with whatever else is going melodically. Whether it’s vocals or not, there’s a lot of things that play off each other, and a good example is the beginning of “Albatross.” Both of our guitar parts were the first things that we played in the demo. They play off each other in weird ways, and it was very accidental.
TEPPEI TERANISHI Everything I’m playing on “Albatross” came out of a jam. I don’t think I came in with any of those guitar parts.
DUSTIN KENSRUE We had the bass riff, the chorus melody and the chords.
Thrice’s Riley Breckenridge (Drummer), Dustin Kensrue (Frontman), Teppei Teranishi (Keyboard)
Courtesy of Robbie Clark
I read that there was a debate about whether to sequence “Scavengers” or “Color of the Sky” first on /East and that the latter won out at the last minute. Did /West have a comparable back-and-forth over sequencing?
TEPPEI TERANISHI Not as far as I remember. We actually had a pretty good idea of how the sequence was going to go while we were writing it, and I feel like we were all pretty much on the same page from the beginning.
DUSTIN KENSRUE The first two and the last two we felt pretty sure about.
TEPPEI TERANISHI Those bookends tend to be the most important parts.
I haven’t been a Thrice message board user since the days of the infamous Thrice message board on your official website …
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE Oh, jeez.
THRICE (Laughs.)
But I did a deep dive across the internet just to get a handle on what subjects come up from time to time. One topic that I noticed fairly often is actually my only quibble in regard to the band. Throughout your career, you’ve consistently omitted great songs from records. To name just a few out of probably a dozen, it’s heartbreaking that “Red Telephone,” “Dead Wake” and “Open Your Eyes and Dream” are songs without a country. Did you break that cycle on /West?
DUSTIN KENSRUE There are no leftover songs. We feel similarly about it. We’re very much album people. So a song not having a home, most of us, not all of us, relate to that feeling [you described] of it just being out there [on its own].
I know you felt that some of them didn’t fit the vibe of a particular record, but how much of it was a label wanting a stocking stuffer for the end of the year?
DUSTIN KENSRUE Well, “Dead Wake” and “Open Your Eyes and Dream” weren’t done when we finished Horizons/East, but we finished them up to have something going on in between [LPs]. We also don’t love super long records, and we try to make them as tight as we can. But hindsight is always weird, and sometimes you’re like, “Aw man.” We all love “Red Telephone,” but for some reason, we just didn’t feel like it fit Beggars well at the time.
Another topic that came up had to do with Teppei’s finger tapping. Teppei, have you lost interest in that technique?
TEPPEI TERANISHI A little bit. (Laughs.) To be honest, I want to say that at least 50 percent of the finger tapping stuff was Riley. Am I wrong?
RILEY BRECKENRIDGE Well, not “Of Dust and Nations.”
TEPPEI TERANISHI Yeah, that was me.
RILEY BRECKENRIDGE “For Miles” was me. Where else is there finger tapping?
TEPPEI TERANISHI “That Hideous Strength” was definitely your riff.
TEPPEI TERANISHI That was me.
“For Miles” is probably my favorite Thrice song, so this revelation changes everything. Riley, have you moved beyond finger tapping?
RILEY BRECKENRIDGE (Laughs.) Yeah, I don’t think I’ve messed with it in a while.
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE It’s your fault [we no longer do it]. (Laughs.)
Riley, as we just proved, you contribute more music than people realize. Of the material you bank, what’s the ratio of guitar parts, drum beats and keyboard patterns?
RILEY BRECKENRIDGE It’s a little bit of everything. To be clear, I present the guys with a really ham-fisted version of whatever it ends up being. I’ll say, “Please make this better,” or “Don’t play it like an idiot,” or, “I recorded this slower than I want it to be because I can’t play it at the speed that I want it to be.” But when I’m writing for a record, I’ll mess around in Reason, which is an electronic-based recording software. When it’s guitar stuff, I usually just see what comes out, and then I’ll start layering more and more shit on top of it until I have to pare it down.
When you demo amongst yourselves, do you keep tabs on each other through a Dropbox or something comparable? Or does everyone keep their cards close to their vest until a grand reveal?
DUSTIN KENSRUE We use an app called Asana to share at the points that we feel like something is in a shareable spot. In the past, we’ve passed Dropbox files around, but we haven’t done that in a little bit. That was when we weren’t living in the same place, and it was harder to jam in person. So, now, it’s a bit more of, like, “Here’s this idea,” and then we jam on it.
You recently talked about the Vheissu-era mystery song that was scrapped, and one of you said you repurposed a part of it for another song. Do you recall where that part ended up?
DUSTIN KENSRUE This is one that Ed always talks about.
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE I don’t know if I should say this, but we have a full recorded version of it.
TEPPEI TERANISHI We do?
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE Yes, we did it on Vheissu.
DUSTIN KENSRUE There was a vocal part that got moved over to another song on Vheissu, but I can’t remember what it was.
Did I mention how much I love stocking stuffers? The full version of that mystery song would make a great one.
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE (Laughs.) Right.
TEPPEI TERANISHI Well, shoot, if we do have it, we might as well [release it].
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE Vheissu ‘25 [in 2030].
TEPPEI TERANISHI Yeah, there you go.
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE Stick with us for a couple more years, guys.
Dustin, I have another recurring topic for you. Prior to /East and /West, you’d said for years that you struggled to find a concept as creatively compelling as The Alchemy Index. Have you guys ever considered just doing more volumes of it? It seems like such a renewable concept due to how broad the elements of Fire, Water, Air and Earth are.
DUSTIN KENSRUE There has been some speculation of playing with that again. I’ll leave it at that.
There’s also a lot of wishes out there for a best-of compilation that reapproaches your material in a more stripped-down fashion. Your reinterpretations have always been rewarding in their own unique ways. Is that something that’s in the realm of possibility?
DUSTIN KENSRUE That’s one that we talk about from time to time, but time-wise, we just don’t have a place to either put it out or track it. We’re always trying to think about how everything sits within touring cycles and balancing that to continue making a living. So it’s a difficult thing to weigh out at times, but there’s a lot there that we could work with.
Thrice’s Dustin Kensrue (Frontman)
Courtesy of Robbie Clark
Thrice has been a band for nearly 30 years. You have a devout following that will buy whatever you release and show up wherever you play. And yet it still seems that you’re under-appreciated. Do you guys feel like you’ve gotten your due as a band?
DUSTIN KENSRUE I feel like there are a lot of people out there who would like our band. They either don’t know who we are, or they had an idea of what we were 25 years ago. Maybe they never listened again or never got into it, but our newer stuff might make sense for what they were into then and now. But I don’t think we think about “our due,” per se. That stuff is so random, and there’s so many amazing bands that no one ever listens to.
For example, it puzzles me how you haven’t been able to make inroads in the film and TV world. Your music is so dramatic and evocative, and something like “Beyond the Pines” would be perfectly suited for a needle drop in any number of movies or shows. Your musical instincts align well with film score, too.
DUSTIN KENSRUE Yeah, we gave up wondering about it a while ago. For a while, we were like, “Yeah, this is going to be something,” and it never happened. So that one baffles me a bit.
TEPPEI TERANISHI I agree with you. It’s strange. To any film or TV people reading this, we’re more than game. We would love to see that happen.
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE It would be cool if somebody wanted us to build something [from scratch]. That’s something we’ve never experienced.
Hopefully, Thrice fan Margot Robbie can remedy this.
THRICE (Laughs.)
DUSTIN KENSRUE Let’s go, Margot.
TEPPEI TERANISHI Yeah, let’s go. What’s she doing?
As former Steve Zissou cosplayers, I assume there are plenty of movies you guys bond over. What do you often watch on the bus?
DUSTIN KENSRUE We watch stupid things on the bus, usually. But The Big Lebowski is good for all times and places.
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE There’s funny things like that Australian film, Stone, which our sound guy is crazy about. It’s a motorcycle gang film from the ‘70s.
TEPPEI TERANISHI Yeah, it’s an Australian B film.
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE It’s amazing.
RILEY BRECKENRIDGE Didn’t we have an ‘80s action movie phase?
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE Cobra.
RILEY BRECKENRIDGE Cobra!
DUSTIN KENSRUE That phase is still going. Every time I go up to the front lounge, there’s some [Jean-Claude] Van Damme thing on.
TEPPEI TERANISHI Top Gun is another one.
Do you guys see Thrice being a part of your lives for many more years to come?
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE Yeah.
DUSTIN KENSRUE I don’t see us stopping. For a while, I was worried my voice just wouldn’t hold up doing it. There was a time where I had a lot of bad luck getting sick on tour, and it was making me think I couldn’t sing anymore. But it’s fine now.
Admittedly, I got a little paranoid because “Gnash” references lyrics from The Illusion of Safety, and I wasn’t the only one to wonder if this was another “Anthology” situation where you were bringing the band’s lyrical history full circle as part of another farewell. [Writer’s Note: Thrice announced an impending indefinite hiatus in 2011, and their song “Anthology” from 2011’s Major/Minor included a lyrical highlight reel to that point. The song then served as an emotional send-off during their “farewell” tour.]
THRICE (Laughs.)
DUSTIN KENSRUE It was just a tiny little nod for fun.
EDDIE BRECKENRIDGE We have so many ideas, and we work well together. We have a system set up, and it would seem like a waste to ever stop. There doesn’t have to be a specific rule of how we do it, but we have an outlet and a desire to keep creating. There’s more music to be made.
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Thrice’s new album Horizons/West releases Oct. 3; visit Thrice.net for upcoming tour dates in the U.S. and Europe.
