Thursday/Envy

Putting together two prolific bands like Thursday and Tokyo’s foremost hardcore unit Envy has made for a stuttering release. As a whole, the four tracks Thursday deliver are great songs, depicting the band reverting closer to Full Collapse. Their At The Drive-In-esque "As He Climbed the Dark Mountain” moves at a vibrant pace, focusing a lot on clean guitar tones set at overdrive and offering a great construction of harmony and heavy. Not until "Appeared and Was Gone” do the electronic noises peek their head out in an ultra-ambient manner, with the sounds of people whispering a muffled conversation in a truly eerie way. Envy’s opening track, "An Umbrella Fallen Into Fiction,” is a hefty six-and-a-half minutes but most of it is delivered at a subtle, slow tempo, with clean guitar lines and a single voice. In the final two minutes they turn up their amps and bring the fury. The final two songs feature Envy playing hardcore, not textural mood music, making up for what at first comes across as a big waft of garbage. If you’ve been dying to hear new music from either band, this is the split for you.