REVIEW: Thrice - Horizons/West

Still standing in solidarity with all humanity and singing.

43:21 // October 3rd, 2025 // Epitaph Records

Releasing twelve albums over 25 years with an unchanged lineup, a devoted fanbase, and positive relations among major and indie labels would constitute a blessing for most artists, and I have no doubt Thrice consider it one. After pivotal works The Illusion of Safety and The Artist in the Ambulance held the doors open for melodic, thrash-descended punk to stage a commercial breakthrough and Vheissu and The Alchemy Index spurned any lingering urge to people-please, the Californian (post-?)post-hardcore pioneers wisely charted course around crisp and agreeable alternative rock beginning with the release of their (to this day tremendously overlooked) 2009 album, Beggars. From that point on, the band has reassembled elements of their prior excursions and shared external influences to functional, familiar ends, though since their return from a hiatus in 2015, that sweet spot has turned into a double-edged sword; the material on their immediate comeback records, To Be Everywhere Is To Be Nowhere and Palms, seemingly aimed to cast a wide net over every demographic that had looked up to the band from their punk roots to their evolutionary years and beyond.

A cynical mind might suggest this grab bag approach was a capitulation towards an industry that never fully gave the band their just deserts, but with another decade of activity in the rearview, it seems more likely that their radio rock-adjacent return was the natural point of compromise between each member’s individual inclinations during their time apart. Musical competence practically guaranteed, a lyrical revolution now drove Thrice instead; prior to dissolution, vocalist/guitarist Dustin Kensrue had effectively mastered the art of Trojan horsing unapologetically Christian parables into receptive, secular spaces, but To Be Everywhere’s stoked fears of domestic upheaval and indictments of American foreign policy re-directed his rhetoric towards decidedly political talking points. Palms in turn kicked off Kensrue’s committed engagement with process thought and Christian humanism, two strands of theology that had percolated into his lyrics before, but never as nakedly as they did there. In that record’s final and finest moment, “Beyond The Pines,” the band even penned a modern hymn transcendent of rigid language or dogma outright, pleading for us to rekindle our own humanity by stopping and smelling the conifers every now and then. I’d argue it’s the best track they’ve ever released. The rest of Palms also existed, I guess.

Thrice themselves seemed to identify that track as a high point deserving of elaboration, and in 2021, Horizons/East extrapolated an entire concept record from its initial epiphany. The album’s themes of self-discovery and open-mindedness largely shed the plainer language of the band’s preceding post-hiatus efforts in favor of eloquent word association, more nuanced narrative structures, and a handy dual-wielded metaphor; east is where the sun rises to usher in each new dawn, and, to paraphrase Kensrue, Eastern religions are more receptive to relativity than the black-and-white evangelical Christianity he was raised within. East’s interrogations of conviction sometimes focused on personal evolution, as told by “The Color of the Sky” and “Northern Lights.” Elsewhere, they approached the precipice of uncertainty with engrossing reluctance, such as in “Still Life” and “Dandelion Wine.” Interpersonal conflict proved the premise even riper; “Scavengers” and “Robot Soft Exorcism” revolved around trying to persuade radicalized agents of destruction out of their mental confines and into Kensrue’s (and/or God’s) mercy—the mass of these conversion narratives, unforced and open-ended enough that the culprit’s fate is never revealed—sure did hit different as the world around us found itself tripping head-over-heels towards misinformation, monopolization, isolationism, and fascism. The healthier and happier communities espoused by East’s narrators aren’t necessarily a pipe dream. They take real effort to manifest, though, and for the first time since their return, Thrice soundtracked that labor with nary a misstep, establishing a new benchmark for their future output.

It’s a benchmark West doesn’t meet in its entirety, but the goalposts haven’t widened by a worrisome degree, either, and the record’s writing process seems at least partially to blame for the slight step backward. Burnt out after East, the band decided to sideline this follow-up until after they had re-recorded and toured for a 20th anniversary version of The Artist in the Ambulance in 2023. Last year, Kensrue also put out a solo country/western album, Desert Dreaming, and presumably returned to his bandmates with a renewed sense of where the Horizons metaphor should take him. The good news: just as East used the sunrise as a symbol of enlightenment, West’s sundowns are a pretext towards timely themes of death and obfuscation. The catch? The lyrical devices here are nowhere near as consistently creative as the ones dusted off four years ago. Take a shot for each melodramatic mention of “dark” or “darkness,” and you might black out before the final cut.

To the band’s credit, their hands-on, homespun production stabilizes Horizons/West as, at the bare minimum, an impeccable piece of sonic engineering, true best-in-show stuff for rock music bearing any balanced ratio of tenderness and zeal in 2025. The mix, finalized by now-frequent collaborator Scott Evans, bolsters each of the band’s sudden breakdowns and dynamic transitions, as exemplified on the drops in “The Dark Glow,” “Vesper Light,” and the Water EP-indebted “Undertow.” Late-run sleeper hit “Distant Suns” is a win all across the board, but its sound design skyrockets the song into the upper echelon of Thrice deep cuts, stargazing, dramatic chord progressions and transfixing harmonies evoking a cosmic expanse while tremolo guitars wash over its “Weird Fishes”-meets-“Of Dust and Nations” groove. Lead single “Gnash,” a metallic red herring, marks the first time Thrice have infused sinister, Reznor-esque electronics, doom riffs, and a furious double-kick breakdown together in one song. Evans’ deft handiwork on Artist Revisited prepared him for this task, so even if Kensrue’s harsh vocals don’t convey the full-blown youthful bellow they once did—and to be clear, his cleans have aged so tastefully this is usually a non-factor—band and assistant are united in their vision there, rendering the track a one-off extremity to savor.

Album-length comparisons to prior Thrice releases tend to get flimsy, though, and West’s distinct perk is how the quartet manages to burrow into other artists’ niches without sacrificing their own fine-tuned chemistry. Second teaser track “Albatross” sonically resembles and lyrically counter-argues the heaven-first tunnel vision of “In Exile,” yes, but it scans just as thoroughly as really good post-90s U2 worship with slightly busier guitar work. By the band’s own admission, the gang chorus and interwoven leads in “Crooked Shadows,” a tune condemning algorithm-induced propaganda, resemble classic Fugazi, and West’s final two songs imply reverence for the work of Tool; “Vesper Light” swings over comparable meter shifts and guitarist Teppei Teranishi sounds uncannily like Justin Chancellor during the song’s bridge, riding a mesmerizing lick reminiscent of the bass in “Schism” (so much so that, in an earlier version of this review, I mistakenly assumed Ed Breckenridge played the part).

And then there’s the curveball: “Unitive/West,” Thrice’s nuttiest musical exploit to date, reprises the abstract layering of East’s corresponding closer with a new set of lyrics, a key now turned minor and dirgy, and the latter’s grand piano overtones swapped for playground tines masquerading as meditation bells. Unlike “Unitive/East,” which was more a studio curiosity than a conventional song, “Unitive/West” functions as both a bespoke thematic capstone to the duo of Horizons records and a nominally-rewarding standalone composition in its own right, though your mileage with its gratuitous ambient tail will surely vary.

Sadly, not everything here is as daring. In West’s least rewarding moments, Thrice downplay the capacity of what they’re working with, often, counter-intuitively, for the sake of the tracklist’s flow. The ominous first half of opener “Blackout,” for instance, suggests a grandiose build that never materializes, instead interrupted by an under-baked refrain that only serves to titillate towards the aggressive attitude on deck in “Gnash.” “Undertow” and “The Dark Glow” utilize the same framework of sluggish verses, intense choruses, and lengthy codas, and the first go-around handily overshadows the second. These two slow-burners bookend the album’s underwhelming center in “Holding On” and one-minute interlude “Dusk,” which, to be generous, attempt to replicate the roles of “The Long Defeat” and “Seneca” from To Be Everywhere. The key differences are that “The Long Defeat” excavates potent thematic resonance from its elongated outro and doesn’t sound like The Gaslight Anthem cosplaying Warped Tour C-listers. Spike in BPM aside, “Holding On” is little more than nostalgia fuel. Through its trite, clumsy chorus and drawn out recession, I am indeed left waiting and wanting.

Any frustration with Horizons/West lies not with those track-to-track inconsistencies, which have become a begrudging price to pay for the standout material we’ve received since the band’s reunion, but with how few songs here are worthy of inclusion among discussion for the band’s all-time best. The aforementioned “Distant Suns” is one, and the other leading stunner to me is “Vesper Light,” golden as its namesake, crescendoing from an autumnal lament to a defiant stand against all those who seek to stifle fellowship and free thought. From the grass beneath our feet to police barricades in city streets, Kensrue, passionately as ever, implores us to “stand in solidarity with all humanity and sing,” the band exorcising all their frustration alongside him in the record’s climax-turned-vigil. Counting the years, it’s inevitable that not every new Thrice song will be equally monumental, but a few more cuts in its vein might have imbued this project with a takeaway bolder than “the lesser half of the Horizons diptych.” Can’t lose sight of the blessing, though—that these guys are still together and finding reasons to stand and sing at all is a minor miracle. Whether their light burns bright as the setting sun or stark as a candle’s flame, Horizons/West retains plenty of reasons to stay drawn to it.

7.5/10