www.THRICE.net

On April 8, Thrice played the House of Blues in Chicago and despite many issues with the venue and backstage/video passes, thanks to the help of their road manager I was able to get backstage and take some time to get to know the guys a little bit and pick their brain about the questions that immidiately came to mind when first getting into their music. For those of you who aren't familiar with this band, they're a technical, melodic punk/hardcore/metal hybrid. [Click here for our album review.]

We'll just start out with what's your names and what do you do?

D: I am Dustin. I play the guitar and sing raspily.

T: I'm Teppei, I play guitar.

E: Eddie, I play bass.

R: I'm Riley, I play drums.

What does "Thrice" mean to you? How did you come up with that name?

D: The name doesn't mean anything.

E: It came from something stupid, but we thought it sounded kinda metal, so it kinda works.

T: It was basically a joke at first...

D: Yeah it was an inside joke, and then we didn't have a name, so...

E: 'Cause when we started out we weren't planning on going anywhere. It was just an after school kinda thing.

"Betrayal is a Symptom" is the song you've chosen for samplers and free download on your web site [click here for mp3]. Can you explain what that song's about?

D: It's just kindof about disappointment in yourself. The name has a lot to do with the meaning of the song. If you're screwing something up, there's probably a reason why; the thing you're doing wrong is a symptom of something deeper.

Why are so much of your lyrics about faith? Why is that subject so prevelent over a lot of other stuff?

D: I don't think it is, necessarily, I think it's just that I write about stuff that hopefully means something rather than stuff that is just frivolous. I try to deal with issues that mean something to me; my inner self is something that's important, so I write about that.

Can you explain why you choose not to be labelled a "Christian band?"

D: I really, really, really, really.... really hate that term; it's a really bad thing, it's really exclusive. Even if everyone in your band is a Christian and you sing about Jesus in all your songs, to call yourself a Christian band is to eliminate a lot of people who might be interested in your band or find something they like in your music. Basically, we're not all Christians, and this band is not in any way a means to promote Christian dogma. I'm kindof amused as to how it's become so much of an issue.

Christians like to make it an issue, unfortunately.

D: I think so, I think people really read into songs what they want to see, and I don't think any of my lyrics are explicitly Christian. I think people who are Christians see some stuff is faith based and then they put their own values into that, which is fine and that's what you're supposed to do with music, but people tend to put that onto the band as a religion thing and we've never made any claims to be part of that scene. It's a cop out scene, it's this built-in audience.

So you specifically try to stay out of that?

D: Yes. We had to play churches a lot at first just 'cause there was really nowhere else to play.

Okay, changing gears a little, there are a lot of kids who listen to your band who are coming at it from a particular genre preference and finding a whole new style in you guys. Personally I listen to a lot of punk and hearing you makes me wonder what other hardcore or metal bands are out there that I might like, and I'm sure there are metal and hardcore kids that love you guys and might wonder the same about punk. So I'd like to ask you to just name some bands in each genre that you really think are good that kids who like you might enjoy. Let's start with punk bands.

T: [Laughs] That's a long list!

D: NOFX..

E: The Living End.

R: I like Bad Religion and Strung Out.

D: Alkaline Trio.

T: Yeah Alkaline Trio

D: Lagwagon, Samiam.

What about hardcore bands?

D: Refused would be considered a hardcore band right?

T: Refused kills everything.

D: I like Orchid a lot.

R: Cave In's old hardcore stuff, and Converge.

Metal bands?

R: Metallica.

D: Slayer, Iron Maiden.

T: In Flames, Darkest Hour.

E: All that black metal, Swedish metal.

You've matured a lot since Identity Crisis. It was a good album and I liked it a lot but the new one completely blew me away. Is there anything you can attribute that to?

R: We got better at our instruments and got more focused, I think. We're willing to take more risks and just do what we wanted to do.

E: When we wrote Identity Crisis, I was mainly listening to punk bands. Then we started going to hardcore shows; me and Teppei went to a Strife show and I was like "Oh yeah that's awesome." We started listening to more styles of music. I think there's things you can take from every style of music. I love jazz music, Dustin loves Michael Jackson, and Teppei listens to a lot of pop music. There's things in all music that are good and I think a lot of people don't like certain stuff because they don't think it's cool.

T: There's a lot of music we listen to that is very far from our music like Radiohead and Bjork.

Do you all write the music together?

[Everybody nods and says yes.]

How do you create?

D: Usually someone will have a part and say "this is cool" and then each of us will add our own thing and it just kindof builds itself.

R: We're all just constantly writing parts, so when it's time to write new stuff we just bring all these parts and try to see what works together, what doesn't work.

T: It's like a jam session.

I have a friend who insists the piano part on "In Years To Come" is from a Nightmare on Elm Street movie. Is that true?

D: It's from something I wrote on guitar...

T: I wrote that.

D: Oh you did?

T: I wrote that! Me! No, we wrote that piano part in the studio, I've never even seen that movie so I don't know. Some kid insisted that one of our parts was a straight ripoff of Testament.

D: I've never even heard Testament.

E: We actually make it a huge effort to make it so that no riff sounds like any other band.

T: It's probably bad.

E: Like somebody will make up a riff and we'll be like "Nope it sounds too much like that." It happens all the time.

D: It happened to Teppei like five times last practice.

Dustin, did you have to condition your voice at all to be able to scream and sing so much, or is it natural?

E: It doesn't always work.

D: It's fickle. It's been awesome on this whole tour and the tour before that and then tonight it was raspy. It's gotten better over time.

Do you have anything you do that keeps your voice strong?

D: Just basic warmups. I'm fine if I do my whole thing but today was just sketchy.

I know you guys read a lot, can you name some favorite authors or books?

D: C. S. Lewis, Ray Bradbury. I just read Dave Eggers book "A Heart-Breaking Work of Staggering Genius." That's very good, it's amazing. Very intense.

R: Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote Fight Club and Survivor. I've been reading a lot of James Patterson who writes horror stories.

E: Everything I read is about like..

R & T: Wood! [laughs]

E: I'm starting to build guitars, I'm on my third guitar right now, so like, I'm a dork.

No that's awesome! I wish I could do that.

D: Tell him what book you read.

E: I just finished this book called "Understanding Wood." [laughs]

Do you have anything to say about the tours or anything?

D: This tour's been so fun.

T: Everybody's our friends on this tour.

R: Everyone's been so cool. We're the only band that's in a van, everybody else is the bus. Usually that's a dividing factor but on this tour it's not at all. Someone's always like "Someone sleep on the bus, come hang out on the bus." Midtown and The Movielife are both awesome, so cool to us.

R: Face to Face, they're a legendary punk rock band and the first day I introduced myself to them and they were super nice to us. They've done a lot for this kind of music, and it's cool that they're not all holier-than-thou.

D: And there definitely are people who are like that.