Earlier this week, Thursday offered their fourth full-length release to the public. There is a marked maturity about this album, both in terms of lyrical cohesion and musicality. The first single, Counting 5-4-3-2-1, is reminiscent of the classic Thursday sound, but contains just the right of experimentation that one could expect from this New Jersey post-hardcore outfit.

While not as mainstream or “poppy” as War All The Time, _A City By The Light Divided _is most definitely an evolution for Thursday.

Many of the songs on A City By The Light Divided have an advanced dynamic quality; the songs are long enough to allow for an emotional build and an ebb-and-flow characteristic to shine through. Arclamps, Signal Flares, A Shower of White (The Light), the album’s instrumental track, and Autumn Leaves Revisited are perfect examples of this.

The opener to this album could not be more perfect. Harmonizing such energy and emotion is a hard thing to do in this genre, but the twinkling guitar and eerie sound effects coupled with the macabre lyrics set the mood for the entire album. Vocalist Geoff Rickly’s inspiration came from a poem by Mexican poet Octavio Paz:

I speak of the immense city, that daily reality comprised of two words: the others.

The entire album’s atmosphere and mood is not necessarily the progression that every Thursday fan could have predicted, but it most definitely is a welcome addition to their repertoire and to their reputation as a leader in this difficult-to-define genre.

Rating: 4/5