yes, i got the chance to interview my favorite band for a second time. i didn’t have much prepared because this was only supposed to be a brief touchdown, so we only spoke for a good 7 minutes. pardon the fanboy in me, but this is the closest i’ve ever come to dustin kensrue, and it was surreal. he’s been a huge part of the music i’ve listened to since 2000, so it was definitely a bit intimidating, to say the least.

hit the jump for the interview and two videos of new thrice songs, “the weight” and “all the world is mad,” respectively.

-grizzly

Roshan Bhatt, weworemasks.com: Alright, for the record, state your name and position in Thrice.

Dustin Kensrue, Thrice: My name’s Dustin and I play guitar and sing.

Riley Breckenridge, Thrice: And I’m Riley, I play the drums.

WWM: To start off, how’s Warped Tour going?

DK: Warped? it’s going good. It’s hot. Today’s really gross. The humidity – I just can’t hang with it.

RB: Yeah, the shows have been good, the weather’s been rough, but that’s Warped Tour.

WWM: Whose sets have you been catching? I mean if you’ve been getting the chance to see anyone play.

DK: I seriously haven’t had any time to watch anyone. I’ve had time to catch bits and pieces. I got to see some of Bad Religion yesterday. They played after us, but we haven’t had a lot of time to catch any other sets yet.

WWM: Have you guys been “lucky enough” to catch a Brokencyde set?

RB: [Laughs]

DK: I haven’t been lucky enough,

WWM: Yeah…what do you think about those types of bands being on the tour?

RB: I don’t. I don’t care. It’s bad, but whatever. There’s plenty of things you have to ignore.

WWM: Well Beggars is coming out in October, right?

DK: Yeah.

WWM: Is there an official date yet?

DK: Nope, not yet.

RB: Nothing official.

WWM: What made you want to release it so quickly? The third and fourth installments of the The Alchemy Index just came out last year.

DK: I think with Alchemy, it feels closer because we spaced that record out, but it has still been a year and a half.

RB: And Alchemy was all recorded at the same time.

DK: Right, so actually, it was more like two years.

RB: Which is pretty normal.

WWM: Yeah, definitely.

DK: We just wanted to space out the release. Just because it was that many songs, and it seemed like a better idea. Kinda like Kid A and Amnesiac.

WWM: With The Alchemy Index, Thrice touched down on a lot of sounds that they hadn’t necessarily explored yet. What’s going to be the main sound influence for Beggars? You’ve covered so many genres, so what’s next?

DK: Genre-wise, i don’t even know what to say. I mean, it’s rock, but we…

RB: We have some mellow songs on it.

DK: It was really just born out of us playing music together again, and not creating music in a computer program or making any sort of conceptual album. It was more of just getting in there and playing. That was really fun and exciting to just get back to those raw instruments. So it’s stripped down in the sense that it’s not as layered as The Alchemy Index. There’s a movement to it that isn’t present on any other records. Kind of a groove. There isn’t a better way to really describe it. All the songs make you want to move, whereas a lot The Alchemy Index was more sleepy-sounding music.

WWM: What were your biggest musical influences going into Beggars?

DK: Man, too many.

RB: Yeah, way too many to pin down.

DK: Usually, an influence will only show itself in our initial ideas. We won’t even be trying to be like something. For instance, Teppei wrote a guitar part that turned into a song that turned into something that sounded like Emilíana Torrini. He was just kinda messing around with the guitar. But he ended up calling the demo “Torrini,” and it ended up being the working title until we finished it. But the rest of the songs were like, “Here’s this file, let’s all jam on it.”

WWM: Did you record it live?

DK: No we wanted to, but our studio is just too small. I’d really like to in the future, but the cost of renting another studio is a lot. And we’re already working within a small budget.

WWM: You record at one of your houses, right?

DK: Yeah, it’s a garage. It’s basically a very tiny studio and we ended up getting a very raw song. There’s nothing that’s double [layered]. It’s like like a guitar, and if Teppei is playing the piano then there isn’t another guitar playing. It’s just stripped down like that. It feels live and very raw. There’s no tuning every two seconds. It just has a lot of energy to it.

WWM: I guess videos of “The Weight” have surfaced online. There’s bluesy undertones to it, so I was just wondering if we can expect more of that [on Beggars].

DK: Our buddy Ross, from The Bled. He was hanging out with us yesterday and he said the new stuff is “brutal blues.” [Laughs] It’s not all bluesy, but there’s a lot of feel to a lot of it in different ways. It’s looser and more open from the past stuff.

WWM: What are your plans post-Beggars as far as touring goes?

DK: Yeah we’ll be going out in the fall. We can’t say with who, yet. But it’s a two-prong tour.

WWM: Headlining?

DK: Yes, part of it.

WWM: I guess that’s about it, I know you have a set time soon. Thanks for talking to us. Good luck with the show today.

DK: Cheers man.

RB: Thanks a lot.

——————————————————–
here’s thrice performing a new song, “all the world is mad” at the houston, tx stop of the vans warped tour:

here’s another new song thrice performed, titled “the weight”:

——————————————————–

that pretty much wraps up all of the warped tour interviews. thanks for reading, if you actually took the time to read any of these.

also, buy beggars in october. album’s gonna be incredible.

thrice on myspace.

-grizzly