Thursday's Common Existence

Just after the release of A City by the Light Divided I was in the most local record store I have and the guy had a description on the cd that read something like "What did you expect them to do? Remake Full Collapse over and over again?". At the time I nodded my head in a Hell Yeah! fashion, because I didn't want that. I wanted Thursday to grow and evolve. I loved Full Collapse, and then I loved War All the Time even more, so I was hoping they would continue the growth. Somehow though something just didn't connect for me with City. I enjoyed it but the changes they had undergone didn't fit for me. The last thing I normally want a band to do is go back to old styles, and that is what Common Existence is essentially doing, but it works for me this time.

It really just clicked for me all of a sudden. I had given it two or three listen throughs, but then I got lost in the barrage of new releases. Initially I wasn't amazed, upon listening to it again after a week or so however I am really enjoying it. I could see this fitting more in between War All the Time and A City by the Light Divided. It's more of an incremental step up from War, but still showing some of the growth on City. The most noticeable difference is that the rock is ratcheted up several notches. There are maybe two or so slower songs, but even the hardest songs will have an interlude,outro or something that brings it down a bit.

So I guess I'm alright with them rehashing their older days. They tried a different style and for some reason it didn't really work for me. I can almost see this release surpassing War as my favorite though, because it's that incremental step above. As long as they keep making some progress, you can't really fault them for making Full Collapse over and over again.