Performer Notes

Personnel: Walter Schreifels, Tim McIlrath (vocals).
Audio Mixer: Dave Fridmann.
Recording information: Stadium Red, Harlem, NY; Tarbox Road Studios, Cassadaga, NY.
Photographers: Dennis Keeley; Mike Chapman ; Michael Brandt.
When "screamo" broke big earlier in the decade, New Jersey's Thursday were one of the wave's biggest beneficiaries. Hit albums and a stint on a major label resulted, but they were always too creatively restless to fit anyone's definition of what that kind of band should be. The group made considerable strides with 2006's A CITY BY THE LIGHT DIVIDED, but they've truly fulfilled a great deal of their potential on its follow-up, COMMON EXISTENCE. The visceral power and loud guitars of hardcore are still present and accounted for, but singer Geoff Rickly's vocals are more sung than screamed, and keyboardist Andrew Everding's contributions are more central than ever. Epic tracks like "As He Climbed the Dark Mountain" and the soaring "Unintended Long Term Effects" echo both classic post-hardcore like Quicksand (whose Walter Schreiffels guests on one song) and atmospheric prog. Thursday continues to grow over a decade into their lifespan.

Professional Reviews

Spin (p.85) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]hings really rev up on latter-half tracks such as 'Circuits of Fever,' which crackles with the colorful chaos of vintage Mars Volta."

Entertainment Weekly (p.68) - "COMMON EXISTENCE is long on complicated instrumental textures and twisty-turny song structures..."

Alternative Press (p.104) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[The album] is able to jump from slash-and-burn epics to huge, eerie washes of sound to '90s throwback post-hardcore with ease."

Billboard (p.33) - "Thursday's Epitaph debut melds the band's hardcore influences with shoegaze and atmospheric elements..."

Kerrang (Magazine) (p.54) - "COMMON EXISTENCE is their best album in years....['Friends In The Armed Forces' is a] major highlight, a shock of driving, riff-laden rock so invasive that it reaches down your throat and grabs you by the guts."

Q (Magazine) (p.93) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's the changes of mood provided by the likes of cerebral centrepiece 'Time's Arrow' that really sets Common Existence apart."

Blender (Magazine) (p.64) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "Album No. 5 -- their first for indie stalwart Epitaph -- amps up the band's aggro guitars, cookie-monster yells and proggy ambition."

Album: Common Existence
#	Song Title	Time
1)	Resuscitation of a Dead Man
2)	Last Call
3)	As He Climbed the Dark Mountain
4)	Friends in the Armed Forces
5)	Beyond the Visible Spectrum
6)	Time's Arrow
7)	Unintended Long Term Effects
8)	Circuits of Fever
9)	Subway Funeral
10)	Love Has Led Us Astray
11)	You Were the Cancer

Album: Common Existence
#	Song Title	Time
1)	Resuscitation of a Dead Man
2)	Last Call
3)	As He Climbed the Dark Mountain
4)	Friends in the Armed Forces
5)	Beyond the Visible Spectrum
6)	Time's Arrow
7)	Unintended Long Term Effects
8)	Circuits of Fever
9)	Subway Funeral
10)	Love Has Led Us Astray
11)	You Were the Cancer