Thrice change

After their hugely successful return with 2016’s To Be Everywhere Is To Be Nowhere, beloved Californian alt-rock four-piece Thrice are readying the follow-up, and they tell us it’s all change.

“My rig is actually totally different since we last spoke,” says vocalist / guitarist Dustin Kensrue. “I have a guitar with Music Man Ernie Ball now – it’s a modified Stingray Guitar that I just absolutely love, and it’s part of a series that they’re doing; I think it’s called Inspired By. The coolest thing about it is a mode where, if you press a button, it makes the pickups run to separate outputs. So if you plug a stereo cable into the jack, you can run the different pickups into separate inputs and amps or whatever.” Dustin has been utilising that potential with his Line 6 Helix effects unit and amp modeller, and hasn’t actually needed anything else. “All the parts I played on the record were with the Helix and with my [Music Man] guitars,” Dustin explains. “I was looking forward to using it, just because I’ve been so happy with the tone, and I didn’t have any reservations about, ‘Oh man, well, if we’re recording, I should use a real amp.’ It just sounds great, and it’s super-easy to dial things in.”

As for what we can expect from the record’s (title TBC) musical direction, Dustin says diversity is the key word.

“There’s some busier guitar work than the last record had,” he reveals to TG, “but it’s pretty varied as a record: a bunch of different dynamic shifts and various movements and feels. In that sense, I think it’s more diverse-feeling than the last record – if it’s more akin to any record, it’ll be to Vheissu because it’s got a lot of different things coming into various tracks and, in some ways, they feel cohesive.”

When September