I've decided that Thrice frontman Dustin Kensrue has a certain affinity for wasting space. Normally, such a statement would preface a negative review of an album (such as the type of review I would have written for his so-called solo "album", Please Come Home, which contained all of 8 tracks, many of which were simplistic, somewhat spiritual folk songs of the variety that really should be beneath a songwriter who has penned much more thoughtful and intricate songs with his band). But in the case of Thrice's latest output, I can't say that the waste of space is a waste of time. On the contrary, their somewhat experimental project entitled The Alchemy Index is turning out to be time well spent for this listener.

Here's the thing. The band decided to record four separate sets of songs based on the four basic elements of the universe (fire, water, earth, and air), with each one exploring an aspect of the band's sound that best fit the mood or texture implied by that element. The first two sets, consisting of six songs each, were released together as The Alchemy Index, Vols. I & II: Fire & Water. In theory, it made sense to separate the "Fire" songs from the "Water" songs, because the sound of each group of songs is markedly different, with the "Fire" set taking the group's literate brand of hard rock and cranking it up a few more notches, and the "Water" set being a more ambient, exploratory, electronic collection of compositions. I have fairly diverse tastes, and I loved nearly all of their album Vheissu, from the fiery "Hold Fast Hope" to the watery "Atlantic", so I was eager to hear both sides. But what baffles me is that the band found it necessary to put "Fire" and "Water" on separate EPs, despite the fact that the 6 songs on each could neatly fit together on a normal-length LP with room to spare. Maybe it's just because I'm an old fogey who still prefers the physical CD to the digital option (I have yet to get myself an iPod), and finds it annoying to have to switch discs after less than half an hour's listening pleasure (especially while driving). The format of this release is really a minor quibble, but all the same, it is kind of a waste of resources. (Then again, so is buying physical copies of albums when they could be downloaded from iTunes. Touche.)

In any event, good art is good art, regardless of whether two striking and complementary paintings by the same artist are hung in the same gallery or not. And I would say that both the "Fire" and "Water" discs qualify, though both also have their shortcomings. I'll discuss the specifics of each as separate "mini-reviews", and simply say at the outset that the two complement each other well in that they prove Thrice's versatility and ingenuity as a band. Save for one or two examples, these songs aren't exactly typical for their genre, whether that genre be blistering hard rock, or mellow, zoned-out electronica.

VOLUME I: FIRE
Aside from the obvious observations that the first volume is full of seething, in-your-face, hard rockers with their fair share of shouting and screaming, it's also worth noting that many of these six songs have an erratic, dangerous sort of motion to them, largely due to the band's increasing tendency to experiment with unorthodox time signatures. Only the last two of these tracks are played in the traditional 4/4, and three out of the four that aren't have some unexpected changeups even once they've established a rhythm. In a way, this mimics the volatile nature of flames, leaping out and consuming the landscape in an unpredictable pattern. The lyrics walk a fine line between cerebral poetry and blunt preaching, perhaps depicting the cries of a soul caught between religious and secular worlds. If there's any setting in which it's most appropriate for Dustin Kensrue to explore the place where art and faith meet, it's in this musical crucible. None of this is going to sound that strange to anyone who enjoyed Vheissu, and while there are places where I think the music and lyrics could use a little polish, it's kind of nice to see a band in the mainstream unafraid to call it like they see it on issues concerning the soul.

Firebreather
While the gallows stand and bullets lance the bravest lungs
Will I fold my hands and hold my tongue?
The band hits you right out of the gate with a molasses-thick guitar riff and a sinister, creeping bass line in this odd anthem which questions the meaning of freedom, daring to ask whether it should be considered synonymous with avoiding pain and discomfort. Dustin's authoritative growl tells us his stance on the issue - better to breathe in the smoke while being burned at the stake for one's beliefs, than to go with the crowd and try not to ruffle anyone's feathers. It's the kind of song that's meant to get you pumped up in a Braveheart sort of way, and while the melodic "whoa"s at the end of the song might seem like a contrived attempt at making a sing-along anthem out of a personal statement, it's still got a good amount of bite to it. As heavy album openers go, it's no "Image of the Invisible", but it's still a solid performance.

The Messenger
How can they hear me when their hearts are hardened?
How can they see me when they close their eyes?
Still they can tell that I'm an easy target
A wooden saw is quite a way to die...
You can already hear the electronic influence at work as the percussion that opens this song gets transformed into a sizzling, crackling programmed rhythm, setting up an odd time signature over which Dustin squares off with God, playing the role of the reluctant prophet as he asks God how he's supposed to go forth and tell the truth when the people don't have ears to hear, and will likely persecute him for it. He's basically telling the story of Isaiah here, except that I don't think Isaiah got his point across with a fierce death-metal growl when he confidently told the Lord, "Here I am, send me!" The hard-edged approach is pulled off quite nicely, though, making this track a whirlwind headbanger that does its business in a scant two minutes of play time.

Backdraft
Oh, swing the door wide open
Show me your jaded eyes
I will turn them red, drunk with vivid flame
You will see again
And you will learn your real name and speak it...
What's this, an acoustic guitar? Hey, you're not supposed to have those in heavy rock songs... Oh, wait, I see how this works. It's sort of like dry firewood being doused with gasoline and set ablaze, and the fire certainly comes roaring out of the furnace during another voluminous blast of a chorus, with alternating patterns of 5/8 and 7/8 just to make sure you have to think about where the beat is while you're busy thrashing about to the music. Dustin shows a lot of versatility here, going from a creepy, almost whispering sort of approach during the verses, to another full-throated roar, and it's almost like he's playing the two sides of an evil master's personality here - one quiet, secretive, and insidious, and the other a ferocious monster that towers over you and demands that you cower in fear. Riley's drum rolls here are pretty darn cool, though you haven't heard nothing yet - wait for the next track.

The Arsonist
There's truth beneath the floorboards
There's hope in brick and stone
But they tell me just to shut my mouth
Leave well enough alone...
This one's my favorite of the Fire songs - it comes bursting out immediately with Dustin's menacing spoken-word threats and Teppei's explosive stabs of electric guitar, while Riley's drums rattle and roll along at breakneck speed - it's a fascinating little obstacle course that the band navigates through, as they perform a song which appears to be written from the point of view of a demented psycho who claims, "I love this city enough that I'll set it ablaze!" There seems to be the intent of rebuilding behind this wanton destruction, but the wanton recklessness of the act comes through much more so than this person's alleged love for the city. (Let me tell you, first hearing this song in the middle of the Los Angeles-area firestorms last fall certainly gave me the creeps.) The whole thing eventually comes crashing down as Dustin's angry rant reaches its boiling point, screaming "It will burn!" again and again.

Burn the Fleet
Well, the old flag will burn with the sand
And a new one will fly if we fail
But the fire continues to rise
And it shows not a hint of any fear in our eyes...
I suppose this would be the closest thing to a "poppy" sort of song on the fire disc, though that's mostly because the tempo is more relaxed and the entire song is sung, instead of parts of it being shouted. It still opens with an anthemic guitar blast, though, which positions it as a sort of power ballad, though there's no romantic schmaltz to be found here. The lyrics seem to be the attempt of a ship's captain or expedition leader to rally his men, telling them that they're going to burn all of their ships and venture forth into the unknown, having knowingly severed their ties to the old world. It's a "Fountain of Youth or bust" sort of approach, and I've heard this theme before in an old song by Steven Curtis Chapman, but Thrice's version is much, much cooler. Er, I mean hotter. Whatever.

The Flame Deluge
I feel that I was meant for something more
My curse, this awful power to unmake
And ever since you found your taste for war
You've forced me onto those whose lives you'd take...
The band saved their heaviest track for the end of Disc 1, and let me tell you, if you thought "Hold Fast Hope" was a doozy, then your ears are really going to be ringing after this one. The distorted and off-the-charts melancholy keyboard intro (or whatever the hell instrument it is) segues into a bone-crushing, Armageddon-inducing scream that is sustained throughout each verse of this song, save for its last. Oddly enough, it's timed with the keyboard melody even though he's not singing, so there's this really odd juxtaposition of resigned sadness and pure terror - it's somewhat like getting your face melted off by standing too close to an open furnace, and then writing a totally emo blog entry about it. Apparently this song is a lament spoken by fire itself in the form of a sonnet, expressing its outrage over being used for things like war and genocide and so forth, when it has greater purpose as a tool to help mankind rather than doing harm. There's a final couplet at the end, which Dustin sings in a soft, ghostly tone of voice, after the landscape has been laid waste to and there's nothing left but glowing embers. Hell of a way to end an album! But wait, we still have Disc 2 to deal with...

VOLUME II: WATER
Switching discs and taking in the floating calm of the "Water" songs could be a bit of a shock to the system if one wasn't prepared for the stylistic switch; however, I think that it would be difficult to buy this album and sit down and listen to it without the title making it obvious that there were two unique halves to the whole. In any event, there's a certain symmetry between the desolate but calm ending of the "Fire" disc and the beat-driven beginning of "Water" - they placed the songs just right to ease you from one mode into the other. This is the part of the experiment where the boys put away their massive axes (for the most part - electric guitars do crop up here and there, playing a different role than they normally do in Thrice's songs) and get all technical and geeky, much like Radiohead did on Kid A, but with results that hopefully aren't quite as alienating to established fans. Here, Riley gets to piece together samples on the laptop instead of beating the life out of the drums in order to create the interesting rhythms, and Teppei gets to run guitars and keyboards through various pedals and filters and basically make his instruments sound like whatever they weren't built to sound like. For the most part, it's more calm than weird, but there is a thick viscosity running throughout several of these tracks - a sense of being stranded on the ocean at night. There's also a feeling of lament in these songs - they're not meant to evoke a sunny day at the beach, and they're intended to be taken as seriously as the "Fire" songs despite the musical style being at almost a polar extreme from Thrice's usual fare.

Digital Sea
And I wept, but my tears are anathema here
Just more water to fill my lungs
I hear someone scream
"God what is it we have done?"
This song bridges the gap between the two halves rather nicely, and as such, it was a good choice for the album's first single, even though it's not at all like Thrice's usual fare. Warm synth tones collide with cold, harsh beats and little electronic squeals in this mechanical number, which finds Dustin lamenting a life of compromise, in which technology has become an excuse for complacency, rendering his convictions hollow. That's the feeling that the song gives me as its sadly beautiful chorus washes over me. It turns out to be my favorite track on the Water disc and on the collection as a whole - I hate to take the easy way out and select the one song that took the most immediately catchy approach, but what can I say, sometimes the marriage of a strong melody, a solid backbeat, and a thoughtful lyric doesn't need to be rocket science. You can probably see the gimmick coming a mile away when Dustin closes the song by repeating, "See, my voice goes to ones and zeroes" as his voice becomes more and more electronically garbled, but despite the obviousness, it's a good moment where the music accurately reflects what's going on in the lyrics.

Open Water
Between the devil and the deep blue sea
I stare into the abyss
The open water is an awful thing
But I'm anxious till the anchor is aweigh...
Dustin's vocals sound appropriately drowned out as some sort of watery effect is applied to his near-whisper during each verse of this song. I enjoy the overall mood created by the organ notes that come bubbling to the surface - there's a sense of helplessness, as if you're on a small raft in the middle of that open sea, unsure of whether the elements will bring rescue or another storm. And yet the guys' warm vocals ring out with a sense of acceptance, even if it's not quite reassurance, when they sing in unison during the chorus, "I'm starting to believe the ocean's much like you, 'cause it gives, and it takes away". I like how Dustin can drop a hint at the idea of what God is like to him, without having to be too obvious and spell it out completely. My only real gripe about this song is that the volume is a bit too low during the verses - this issue becomes a bit more prominent during the next track, actually.

Lost Continent
Was there a time we weren't at war
When we knew what our hearts and hands were for?
I don't believe there ever was...
This track is one of the more frustrating ones that Thrice has come up with, because they've come up with a rather majestic, cataclysmic sort of melody, which builds to one of the best crescendos this side of Sigur Ros, and yet they've chosen to bury the quieter parts of the song so far back that the whole thing feels a bit murky. I suppose that if you're going to write a song about human civilization as we know it being swallowed up by the sea due to our own ignorance and apathy about our misdeeds (be they sins of the moral variety or the environmental variety - that's up to your interpretation), then it makes sense for your highs to be really high in comparison with the lows, just to give the audience that sense of the tidal wave being absolutely massive and inescapable. The problem is that listening to this song without headphones on generally requires a volume adjustment up and back down again a few times during the length of the song, just to get the meat of the lyrics without being blasted by the loud, dirge-like swell of the chorus. I don't mind songs that have their quiet and mellow passages, but I don't see much point in obscuring the quieter end of the spectrum even more.

Night Diving
A six-minute instrumental on an experimental rock record is usually an obvious sign of a band's overindulgence getting the best of them - especially when most of it consists of noodling around with the same guitar riff over and over. There's something about the gentle motion of this track that is incredibly compelling, though, making it not wear out its welcome at all, despite the length and the lack of lyrics. The electric guitar is surprisingly prominent in this one, making an initially peaceful descent into the waves as shards of moonlight (that'd be the keyboards) shimmer all around it, but as things go deeper, the band amps up the sense of foreboding by kicking on those distortion pedals and breaking out of the programmed haze for a glorious couple of minutes. Not that the programmed haze is a bad place to be - there's a break in the middle where the synthesizers bring a sense of angelic calm, almost mimicking distant voices, calling our diver to return to the surface. Eventually the whole thing tapirs off in a warped fadeout (which reminds me of the ending of their song "For Miles"), and then... whoosh! The electric guitar pops back up at the surface, letting out a contented sigh of relief at the ability to breathe unassisted.

The Whaler
The boat and the blade, they are all that I know
The sea calls my name, and I must go
And while they still sleep, I slip out through the door
But how can I leave with my anchors ashore?
Surprisingly, one of the album's most synthetic songs is also its most human and touching. Dustin knocks it out of the park here, with a tender song written from the point of view of a man who relies on long days and weeks away at sea for his livelihood, but whose hearts aches for his wife and child back at home. As the light keyboards and skittering beats skip about in a surprisingly un-convoluted 5/8 time signature, the man recalls his daughter's forlorn face as she sees him making his way out the door: "Father, where do you go, so far out upon the sea? When are you coming home to me?" Of course this is all just a more roundabout way of dealing with the "road song" urge that every band gets, compelling them to write about the rigors of touring and being away from their families and all that, but if a band's gotta write such a song, I'm thrilled to see Thrice doing it in such a clever way, without going for the obvious, sappy "power ballad" approach. The soothing wash of human voices is also a nice touch, closing out the song with their spacious echo after the computerized instruments have all fallen away.

Kings Upon the Main
Despite the best of maps and bravest men
For all their mighty names and massive forms
There'll never be, and there has never been
A ship or fleet secure against the storms...
Listening to this final song, with its distant, dull percussion and its slow, churning piano gives me a mental picture of standing on the ocean floor and watching a huge Viking ship sail over my head. This is the "water sonnet", the complementary piece to the intense "fire sonnet" that closed the first disc, and if I apply the same logic to this one, it would mean that it was written from the point of view of the ocean. The lyrics read as a sort of warning from a restless sea to the men who dare sail upon it, warning them to never get too cocky and assume they're the ones in control. It's an interesting bit of poetry, which nicely complements the human point of view found in "Open Water", and you can extend the God analogy from that song to this one if you like. Unfortunately, while this song makes me think of interesting interpretations, it's not terribly interesting to listen to. That makes it a bit "dead in the water", if you'll pardon the pun, as a way to close out the album. I realize that the mood is supposed to be all watery and distant, but I still find myself wishing that the various sounds in this song weren't so mushed together. It dulls the effect and makes the overall sound a bit colorless.

Overall, this was an interesting and worthwhile experiment for the band, and I'm curious to see how Air and Earth get represented in musical form (I'll take a guess; acoustic folksy stuff, and exotic instrumental pieces with lots of woodwinds? Maybe that's a bit too far afield for this band, but you never know.) Once the experiment's over and done with, though, I kind of hope that they take what they've learned and mix the disparate elements back into a unified and formidable blend of performance and recording technique. That, I think, would be where the true "alchemy" begins.

ALBUM WORTH:
Firebreather $1.50
The Messenger $1
Backdraft $1.50
The Arsonist $2
Burn the Fleet $1
The Flame Deluge $1
Digital Sea $2
Open Water $1
Lost Continent $.50
Night Diving $1
The Whaler $2
Kings Upon the Main $.50
TOTAL: $15

Band Members:
Dustin Kensrue: Lead vocals, guitars
Teppei Teranishi: Lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Eddie Breckenridge: Bass, keyboards, backing vocals
Riley Breckenridge: Drums, sampling

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening