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For the last twelve years, the magnificent Thrice have been producing some of best melodic hardcore in the genre. After pushing the boundaries of experimental rock music to the very edge with the hugely ambitious EP series 'The Alchemy Index', the band returned to their organic and raw sound with 2009's 'Beggars'.

After a four year absence on the UK touring circuit, the band arrived on our shores to play five intimate dates in the run-up to their massive show with Brand New, at Wembley Arena at the start of 2010. We at Organised-Sound were lucky enough to speak to Dustin Kensrue about touring, their new record and the band's future directions.

OS: So you're coming to the end of your UK tour for the first time in around for or five years. What's it like being back in the UK touring?
Dustin Kensrue [vocals/guitar]: It's been great! We're just trying to make it not such a long time between; we're trying to come back and do some festivals later this year.

OS: How do you find that the new material has been going down?
Dustin: It seems to be going down really well. It's hard to tell, but it seems to be going down better here than in the States.

OS: Are you excited for the Brand New show tonight?
Dustin: I am, it should be fun. We did a similar show a couple of months ago in Long Island, where we flew in and used rented gear and it was kind of hectic and had lots of technical problems. But we've been out with this gear for a week now, so hopefully it go more smoothly. It's an honour to be in the show and a pleasure to play with these bands. I have a lot of respect for both of those bands.

OS: You haven't been able to bring Teppei [Teranishi, guitars] out on this tour because of family commitments back at home and he didn't do some of the dates on the US tour. What's it been like not having him there? Especially as he produced the album, what's it like playing the new material without him?
Dustin: That's not so much the weird thing, it's just not having him around. After eleven and a half years of it being the four of us always, it's definitely odd. Especially the first couple of days on the tour back home when he wasn't there. You just keep looking for him before the show - it's really strange. But Nate is doing a really great job filling in and Teppei's going to be back out with us after this run.

OS: Does it throw you off when you're on stage not having him there?
Dustin: It's been not as bad as I thought. Nate's done a really great job. He has a different vibe and energy than Teppei - but a good vibe and energy, so it's just been different but it's been alright. We'll definitely be glad to have him back.

OS: When you recorded 'Beggars' you did it in a small studio that was built at home. You said you did that because of financial reasons, and to be close to your families but do you think that environment had any effect on the kind of album you made with Beggars?
Dustin: I don't think particularly, because we made 'The Alchemy Index' there as well, and those are very different projects. I think we're comfortable working there even though it's very cramped and not the best circumstances for actually recording sound but Teppei does a good job with mediating that.

OS: Do you like that environment - being in a cramped space - or is it just...?
Dustin: No, I don't like being cramped but it works for us. It's different to a normal record where you're stuck somewhere recording for long days. We do the 9 to 5 thing and do that while we're writing and tracking.

OS: In the vein of your approach to DIY recording, you mentioned on your website about using wooden blocks in the studio. What were these used for?
Dustin: It definitely helped tame the room a little bit. The shape that it is, it's a really bad shape: it's a square and the sound is very mathematical, so if you have a bad mathematical shape and sound then it's crazy. You build these little things, I can't remember the name. It's like a box and each side has slants and the space between each slant is indented in different levels and basically a math problem that the sounds get trapped in there without going all crazy. So it's been helping especially in the control room, we have some other kinds of buffers in there.

OS: There was talk of you tracking the latest album live but you didn't in the end. Why was that?
Dustin: You just can't at the studio - it's too small. There's no way to get any separation. I really like how the demos sound cause they're all raw and they don't sound too far off what we ended up going with. When you're trying to mix you lose a lot of options of how you can set things and where you can put them. There's a chance, if we can get some cheap studio space, that we'll track the next one live. We'll rehearse it and go do most of it live.

OS: You said yourself that the demos sounded raw, and this album is obviously much looser than 'The Alchemy Index' and 'Vheissu'. What is it that made you want to progress with this more raw, live energy album?
Dustin: A lot of it was just getting into the studio and playing and just being excited to play our instruments again. Not having these very structured visions of where we wanted to go with it. I think that that was good for what we were doing then, but it was nice to break out of that. So, once we started playing together all the ideas that we were bringing in started moving towards that kind of sound. As we were doing it, we started having the idea to keep it stripped down, leave these parts out that were extraneous layers and just have it be four people playing instruments and not have anything added to it.

OS: An album like 'Vheissu' was definitely one of your more experimental records. Do you find that there's a point where you don't want to necessarily "experiment" anymore, but just want to be an organic, 'four guys with instruments' band?
Dustin: It just depends on what's happening and what you've done before or what head space you're in at the time. I don't think it's in any way like we're never going to make something really layered again; it's just, right now, it felt right, and the best direction for us to go in right now.

OS: Do you have any idea where you'd like to go next with your sound?
Dustin: Not particularly. I'm fairly interested in making a heavier record but I don't want to get everyone's hopes up thinking it's going to be a metal record.

OS: There's been lots of arguments over that.
Dustin: We'll never make a metal record. Maybe I'll eat my words on that but I highly doubt that. There's not enough feel in it for us to really be drawn to it. I think we really like having a movement to the music and I think that's something we capture a lot with the new record. We'll probably try to keep some of that live. I like my heavy stuff live and I like some of the energy that's there. So we'll see. I'm only speaking for myself.

OS: Teppei posted on message boards recently about 'Beggars' being the heaviest song you've written, in terms of an emotional way.
Dustin: Yeah, I definitely think there's a confusion in the term 'heavy'. People say they want us to make 'heavy' music, like 'Identity Crisis' or 'The Illusion of Safety.' They're vast and they're energetic, but I don't think they're very heavy. They attempt to be sometimes, but songs like 'Hold Fast Hope' and 'The Earth Will Shake' and some of the stuff off the 'Fire' record are far heavier than those earlier releases.

OS: When we saw you play at Leeds recently, 'The Earth Will Shake' came across as very heavy, especially in terms of atmosphere.
Dustin: Yeah, exactly. Well people, to me, misuse the word 'heavy'... I would say that, from what I can tell, what we're all interested in is keeping a sense of grooves or whatever. The idea of bringing back a little more math-y stuff and heavier grooves based on some of the stuff we've done in the past, where it's very heavy but with a heavy groove and there's a movement to it.

OS: You're obviously a very strong lyrical band, to the point of which the lyrics are as intelligent as the music. For example, in the Alchemy Index, the last song on each of the records is in sonnet form. Why is it important to you to keep the lyrics at that level?
Dustin: It's very important to me and I'm the one who writes all the lyrics so... I'm just kind of a perfectionist with it. I've come to realise that I don't write lyrics in the way that most people do. The way that I think about it is kind of different and I almost see it as a puzzle. Almost like there's a bunch of puzzle pieces laid out from different puzzles and first I need to find which ones go together and then there's a bunch of extra ones too. I'm building a puzzle and I don't know what it is. That's the best way I can describe it. I did personality tests and they say I should be a lawyer or engineer. Although I'm fairly artistic in certain ways - I approach it differently. I think that's where my lyrics get their quality. And I guess also, the subject matter is usually not something small. I like to write about big issues and meanings of life and stuff like that.

OS: Why do you like to bring religious quotes and literary references into your lyrics? As a Christian, how do you think that effects your viewpoint on creating lyrics?
Dustin: I think that to write well you have to write honestly. That doesn't mean that you have to write literally as yourself, but it means that you have to write from a place that resonates with you on a certain level and try to get some level of transparency; get your heart on the page in some way. And so your world views are going to show through, even if you don't think in terms of world views. I think it's very helpful and more people should do it. To understand that all your thoughts are fitting in some kind of logical pattern, even if you don't know it, you're making general assumptions: why you're here? What life is? What is good and bad? All these things have to fit into some kind of world view. If you're not thinking about it, it's probably kind of messy and contradictory on a lot of levels but you're still writing from some kind of place.
For me, I probably understand fairly well my beliefs. That's not to say those things are necessarily true, but it's what I would believe is. So, that's where I'm writing from and so everything I write about is perceived from there and it's how I look at it.
Say 'All The World Is Mad': that's looking at the bad things in the world and saying "why is this this certain way?" So, that song is kind of documenting this idea of 'sin' or 'fallen-ness'. My view there would be that there is good in man because we're created in God, but that we're also fallen. So that's a way of explaining why there's beauty in the world, and why there's bad in the world. Another world view could say that there is no actual good, there is no actual evil, you're just the product of this and this and random chance. You think there's good and you think there's evil, but nothing actually is that. That's a pretty primal view on the world, even if people don't vocalise it that way - that's kind of what's on their mind. So, that song is kind of a way of showing where my view is and forming it as I write it. I'm writing about something wrong with the world, so I'm asking questions. What does it look like the problem actually is?
I guess it influences it at a very deep level. What I actually write about, it's usually dependent on what the music sounds like. I write after the music, which a lot of people don't. So with the past couple of records I've really tried to fit in an idea or topic that would go with the music and then I try to get the flow of the narrative to go with the flow of music as well and it ends up shaping what I write about too.

OS: What was it that inspired you most, musically and lyrically, on Beggars?
Dustin: I think lyrically it was the past year I've been examining a lot of reformed theology, stuff like Calvin. Just a different understanding of things. It sounds very abstract, but I think a lot of the record is me dealing with different aspects of that. I think that was the biggest mental thing that was going on at the time. I don't know how much is directly in there - it's hard to tell.
Musically, I don't know. I don't think we looked really far outside of ourselves. The music is more process and love of music and when we're together we start making stuff that's exciting to us. At times it's like "Oh! This kind of reminds me of this", but usually it's not like I was listening to this one thing. The only times that really happens if you want an energy like this and you have a vague idea you'll listen to things that you think will set you on the right track to get your brain moving.

OS: The album leaked a few months before it was due to be released. How did the band recover from this? Usually it's only a week or so, but several months must have been hard to deal with.
Dustin: It definitely wasn't ideal. You have a plan of how you're going to release certain things, and we just had to scrap that plan and scrambled to figure something else out. We got those other five songs as a bonus release so people would buy it. It was kind of a mess but it doesn't help to cry about it. I heard about it and was like "oh, a new game plan then."

OS: You love to do the artwork and make that a part of the album too. It seems like that's a dying idea.
Dustin: The cool thing is the renewed interest in vinyl so you can do that side and also have the digital side. I like both aspects. I love digital music just because when I'm on the road, I can grab something on my phone and listen to it right there.

OS: So, what are the rest of your plans for the year?
Dustin: To get back out here once, possibly twice and we're doing a tour that will be announced soon in the States. I keep mentioning it but I'm not meant to talk about it. We'll basically be touring throughout the year.