Photo by Atiba Jefferson / Words by Maddy Howell

Steadfast in their refusal to stand still, a fearless drive for experimentation has sat at the heart of the four-piece since they emerged from the Orange County underground  in 1998. Never afraid to dismantle and rebuild in the name of evolution, their sound has taken countless shapes throughout their career.

Uncompromising and unpredictable, the latest chapter in their story comes in the form of Horizons/West, the first true sequel in the band’s discography. Conceived as the companion to 2021’s Horizons/East, it continues their exploration of fractured identity, societal manipulation, and technological anxiety, offering up a poignant meditation on endings and perception. Wrapped up in cinematic post-rock textures and delivered with an unflinching urgency, it’s a bold statement from a band that continues to evolve without compromise.

To celebrate the arrival of Horizons/West, we sat down with frontman Dustin Kensrue to discuss the making of the album, the lessons carried forward from their past, and the questions that continue to drive Thrice into the future.

 

Horizons/West is a direct continuation of the previous record, which is something you’ve never done before. What made you realise that Horizons/East wasn’t the full picture yet - that there was more of that story to tell?

Kensrue - It happened halfway through creating what was going to be the Horizons record. We had a bunch of ideas we were excited about and thought, ‘What if we make two records and split them?’ Had we finished everything at once and turned it in, that would have been one album. But life kicks in, so that took priority. We realised it would take too long to finish it all, so we’d complete the first half, then start the next.

When we got to the end of the first half, I was mentally exhausted. Making a record is fun, but it’s draining. I thought, ‘We don’t have to do this right now’. The Artist in the Ambulance anniversary was coming up, and we knew we’d do something for that. We’d always talked about re-recording it, so we gave ourselves a break and decided to come back to Horizons.

So, it went from a back-to-back plan to a longer break, which gave us a different record than it would have been. Not many of the original ideas ended up on this one because we had newer ones that we were excited about. It made a better record. Lyrically, knowing West was coming helped. When we split to the East/West concept, I had little time to shift songs toward the imagery of the East - beginnings, sunrise. But I had a couple of years to marinate on West - endings, sunsets - so this one became thematically dense, more so than anything we’ve done except The Alchemy Index. Having that much time to sit with the central image was really fun.

The two records exist in the same world, but there’s a stark difference between them. You can almost hear the extra time that went into the second half...

Kensrue - It’s interesting, because the way we actually wrote was really compressed. We’d been building ideas over time, but the period we assembled them into finished songs was only four weeks, which is tight for us. Deadlines pushed us, and we leaned into not overthinking. We jammed in a room, captured the energy, pulled pieces from those jams, and paid attention to what happened the first time we played something - there’s often a spark you can lose if you keep tinkering.

So, we chased those first instincts. It kept a fresh energy we might have lost if we’d spent three months figuring everything out. I’m interested in doing that again - build a bunch of ideas, then compress the assembly so we don’t give ourselves enough rope to hang ourselves. It was a cool contrast. A long time to marinate on lyrics, then a tight window to put the songs together. In that same period, I was also locking in what each song was actually about, not just gathering ideas.

 

It’s a bit like how bands work early on in their career, following the idea of ‘this sounds good, put it down’, rather than overthinking. Having recently revisited The Artist in the Ambulance, did that make you reflect a little going into this?

Kensrue - Revisiting Artist and The Illusion of Safety definitely impacted our approach. Historically we’ve always pushed the idea of, ‘We just did this, so let’s do something else’. Coming full circle to the beginning on our own terms - without anyone pressuring us to re-embrace a sound - was liberating. Once we reacquainted ourselves with that era, it was like, ‘This is fun’. When you’re only a couple of years out, you bristle at it and think, ‘That’s not what our band is’. With distance, you can appreciate it again.

You can hear bits of that on this record and likely going forward. The most obvious example is the double-bass breakdown at the end of ‘Gnash’. I don’t think we’d have done that before revisiting the old stuff. We hadn’t done it in 20 years. It almost started as a joke like, ‘What if we did that?’ We tried it, and it was fun.

Sonically there’s a freeing quality to this album, and it certainly feels like you’re having fun. However, the lyrics dig into heavier territory: identity, manipulation, technological anxiety, spirituality. Where was your head at when writing?

Kensrue - When I’m writing, four things are always happening: what’s going on inside me; what’s going on in the world; what I’m ingesting through reading and media; and the sound bed of the music, which I lean on to tell me what it’s trying to say. I map the other things onto that mood. I don’t really know what songs are about until the music’s vibe starts telling me. For this one there was a fifth element: the overarching theme.

So, I took the central metaphor of the setting sun and used it in different ways. Sometimes the ending is needed and welcomed, sometimes it’s feared and dreaded. I also explored how you shift that perspective. I’m turning 45, looking at my life - what I’ve been doing, what I want to be doing - and people around me are doing the same. Meanwhile the world seems to be losing its mind. I tried to talk about all of that in a way that felt helpful to me and hopefully to others.

 

When you’re trying to capture such vast ideas in music, you need the right people in the room with you. Scott Evans mixed and co-produced the record alongside the band. How did he add to the process?

Kensrue - He’s like a fifth member in the writing process now. He understands what we’re trying to do in the studio and what needs to happen to make it sound great without changing what it is. We want a raw, immediate sound, but we also want it to feel big and fun. Finding the middle ground is tricky. If you go too raw it can feel weak and anaemic, but if you push too far the other way it can sounds smushed and lifeless. Scott is great at taking what we’re doing and getting it across the finish line. This time we did a more aggressive mastering than usual with Scott, and I feel like this is the best-sounding record we’ve ever had. It’s the closest to what the music feels like it should be to us.

Writing good songs is one thing, but you need someone who can put that last-minute magic into it. It’s especially important when your band’s identity evolves as swiftly as Thrice’s, too. Twenty-plus years and twelve albums in, how do you keep the curiosity alive? 

Kensrue - That’s almost the least of our problems. There’s no shortage of ideas, the hard thing is deciding which to chase because you can’t chase them all. We write democratically. Everyone brings parts, and we decide together what to pursue. The ideas are always different. We’re eclectic listeners, so there are many influences. Over time we’ve given ourselves room to do anything, which is fun but very open - it makes deciding harder.

These days, a little spark in one idea pulls us. Maybe it’s something you’ve been brewing, or someone throws something down and you think, ‘We’ve got to explore that’. The creative process is why we still love doing this. Being in a band is fun, but it’s a grind. If the creative process didn’t continually renew everything, we couldn’t sustain it. Playing shows is part of that process, of course, but it’s the end stage. It doesn’t feel complete until you’ve shared it live. It’s all one big creative loop. We really love writing and recording. Inspiration isn’t the issue for us, it’s where to point it.

While recording, do you think about how songs will translate live, or is that more of an afterthought?

Kensrue - It definitely comes into play. It’s always a piece of the puzzle, and in certain songs it shows up more. For ‘Blackout’, we were thinking about the chant part and what it would feel like live. That helped us fine-tune our approach.

At this point, how do you view Thrice’s identity? A lot of bands get boxed in by what they did years ago, but that’s never really been the case for you guys…

Kensrue - It’s always hard. We’ve pushed against solidifying an identity, which is bad for marketing but honest for us. If pressed, I use a few adjectives: it’s a rock band, eclectic, dynamic, cinematic or theatrical. There’s a drama in how we craft songs, and they usually move in a dramatic way even without lyrics. That’s still vague, but there isn’t an easy way to encapsulate what we’ve done or are doing now.

 

Finally, when people sit down with Horizons/West for the first time, what do you hope sticks with them?

Kensrue - I’m excited for people to hear it. There’s something special about this record. Sometimes you stumble on something, and I feel like this record stumbles into something cool. I’ve listened to it more than probably any record we’ve made right after finishing… I really dig it.

As for the takeaway: it wrestles with big issues, especially anxieties and fears that, whether we realise it or not, are often tied to our fear of death and how that plays out in our subconscious. I hope it helps people wrestle with that and consider better ways to approach those fears than running from them.

The core snippet of the record is placed in the middle on purpose. In the middle of ‘The Dark Glow’, there’s a quiet part that flips the meaning of the song. It says, ‘What if all we thought was darkness was instead the truest light? What if all we feared was empty was the fullness of our life?’ I really love that. I feel like I’m writing about the same thing from different angles these days, and that gets pretty close to summing it all up.

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Horizons/West, the new album from Thrice os now available via Epitaph Records. Get the album - HERE

Paired with the launch of Horizons/West, Thrice is set for a fall headlining tour beginning October 17th in San Diego, CA and circling back to Southern California for a pair of  hometown performances on November 23rd and 25th at House of Blues in Anaheim, CA. Along the way, Thrice will touch down in Austin, Orlando, Boston, New York, Toronto, Montreal, Detroit, Chicago, two nights in Denver, Vancouver, San Fransisco and more with Modern Color and Downward in tow. See dates below. Get tickets - HERE

Thrice 2025 Tour Dates

Fri Oct 17 – San Diego, CA – Observatory NP

Sat Oct 18 – Tempe, AZ – Marquee Theatre

Mon Oct 20 – Dallas, TX – HOB Dallas

Tue Oct 21 – Austin, TX – Emo's

Thu Oct 23 – Atlanta, GA – Masquerade Heaven

Fri Oct 24 – St. Petersburg, FL – Jannus

Sat Oct 25 – Orlando, FL – HOB Orlando

Mon Oct 27 – Charleston, SC – Charleston Music Hall

Tue Oct 28 – Norfolk, VA – NorVa

Wed Oct 29 – Baltimore, MD – Baltimore Soundstage

Fri Oct 31 – Boston, MA – HOB Boston

Sat Nov 1 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza

Sun Nov 2 – Philadelphia, PA – TLA

Tue Nov 4 – Toronto, ON – Danforth

Wed Nov 5 – Montreal, QC – Beanfield

Fri Nov 7 – Cleveland, OH – Globe Iron

Sat Nov 8 – Detroit, MI – Majestic

Sun Nov 9 – Chicago, IL – HOB Chicago

Tue Nov 11 – Minneapolis, MN – Fillmore Minneapolis

Thu Nov 13 – Denver, CO – Summit

Fri Nov 14 – Denver, CO – Washington’s

Sat Nov 15 – Salt Lake City, UT – The Union

Mon Nov 17 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore

Tue Nov 18 – Seattle, WA – Showbox SoDo

Wed Nov 19 – Portland, OR – Roseland

Fri Nov 21 – San Francisco, CA – Regency

Sat Nov 22 – Los Angeles, CA – The Novo

Sun Nov 23 – Anaheim, CA – HOB Anaheim