Ethereal Metal

Ryan Murray | Co-Owner | Chief Editor | Contributor | Photographer

r.m.music84@gmail.com

Thrice have always been a band in motion. Since emerging from the late ’90s Orange County post-hardcore scene, they’ve spent more than two decades refusing to be pinned down, shifting from hardcore grit to progressive experimentation to atmospheric rock. In 2021, Horizons/East marked a turning point, cinematic, spacious, and steeped in existential rumination. Now, its long-awaited companion, Horizons/West (out October 3rd via Epitaph), arrives like the closing of a parenthesis. Where its predecessor looked inward and eastward with quiet urgency, Horizons/West faces the unknown with a mixture of fire and fragility.

The opening salvo, Blackout, immediately makes the stakes clear. Built on taut rhythms and a brooding melodic line, it leans into the band’s knack for tension that feels equal parts meditative and explosive. It’s the perfect launch point for Gnash, the album’s lead single and easily one of its most feral tracks. Bristling with snarling riffs and Dustin Kensrue’s caustic delivery, Gnash summons memories of Thrice’s rawer past, with The Illusion of Safety and even Vheissu coming to mind. For longtime fans, it’s a thrilling reminder that the band can still unleash teeth-bared aggression when they choose, though here it’s sharpened by years of refinement.

But just as quickly, Thrice pivot. Albatross drifts into view with wide-open space, its soaring vocal lines and aquatic guitar textures evoking both burden and release. It’s followed by Undertow, which, aptly named, pulls you under, smoldering like the slow burner that it is, coiling with menace as it drags you deeper into its current. Where Gnash erupts in fire, Undertow drowns you in shadow, proving once again that Horizons/West thrives on contrast.

Even the record’s more straightforward moments carry a deeper weight. Holding On offers an anthemic, almost pop-infused immediacy, all shimmering hooks and undeniable momentum, but beneath the surface it’s riddled with doubt and yearning. Dusk, by contrast, hushes into one of the album’s quietest, most vulnerable and thought-provoking passages. It’s a haunting, atmospheric interlude, stripped of vocals, serving as a perfect segue into the searing weight of “The Dark Glow.” The sequencing here feels intentional: holding on, then letting go, then fading into night.

The middle stretch is where Horizons/West digs into its most evocative terrain. The Dark Glow feels like a thesis statement, the tension between light and shadow, hope and disillusion, rendered in dynamic crescendos. It bleeds into Crooked Shadows, another standout, where the band momentarily slip back into something harsher, riff-driven, and full of bite. It’s here that Thrice most directly tip their hat to the fury of their youth, even as they frame it through the perspective of seasoned artists who’ve lived with darkness long enough to recognize its contours.

If those tracks recall their hardcore roots, Distant Suns turns outward with widescreen wonder. It’s expansive, searching, drenched in reverb and awe, a track that could stand comfortably alongside the band’s most atmospheric moments. Then comes Vesper Light, which begins as a luminous near-ballad glowing like a prayer at the edge of dawn, but quickly picks up the pace into one of the album’s most defining moments, carried by an ache that’s impossible to miss. There’s a shifting pulse in its atmosphere that quietly nods to Tool’s Schism, not as imitation but as kindred spirit, a rhythmic unraveling that underlines the song’s ache and transcendence.

And then the curtain closes with Unitive/West, a track that feels like the natural conclusion not just to the album but to the entire Horizons arc. It’s meditative, sprawling, and spiritually charged, offering no easy answers but leaving the listener with the sense of having journeyed somewhere both immense and deeply personal. It’s a finale that doesn’t resolve so much as open a new door, which is fitting for a band whose career has been defined by endless seeking.

What makes Horizons/West resonate isn’t just the balance between rawness and beauty, but the way Thrice embrace both without compromise. Where Horizons/East was introverted and meticulous, Horizons/West is more outward-facing, more confrontational, even when whispering. Tracks like Gnash and Crooked Shadows show the band still carry the ferocity of their post-hardcore beginnings, while songs like Vesper Light and Albatross prove their mastery of restraint and atmosphere. It’s an album that thrives in dualities—light and dark, tension and release, east and west.

For better or worse, Thrice are no longer the band that wrote The Artist in the Ambulance. But that’s precisely the point: they’ve become something else, something deeper, something still vital. With Horizons/West, they reaffirm why they remain so significant in 2025, because they continue to grow, to challenge themselves and their listeners, to write songs that linger in both heart and head. And though this record closes a chapter that began four years ago, it also feels like the start of something larger.

Thrice have never been content to stay in one place. Horizons/West is proof that their compass still points forward—even when the map runs out.

Verdict: 4/5