Trading metal for melody

Sometimes, less is more. It may not be appropriate, though, when being loud is your thing.\nFollowing the surprising success of 2003's The Artist in the Ambulance, Thrice returns with Vheissu, their fifth full-length release, a far cry from their previous outputs. The band's post-hardcore throttle is only evident on about half of the album's 11 tracks, the others yielding to a softer, more melodic side. "Image of the Invisible" kick-starts the album with the same ferocious left-of-center political rock fans would expect from the California quartet, but the mood throughout the album is far less concrete.\nThe move toward vocal harmonies is one of the bigger shifts in the band's style, with singer Dustin Kensrue's growl giving way to scratchy but sweet choruses. On "Atlantic," Kensrue and company coo in earnest over a soft electronic piano that manages to sound unlike a ballad, despite the song's consistently slow pace.\nOn the note of ballads, most bands offer their artistic credibility as a sacrifice when they resort to sappy string sections for the slow-dance numbers. Thrice opts for a stripped-down approach, letting the empty echoes of the studio invoke emotion instead of forcing it with a philharmonic orchestra.\nThe same approach that feels genuine also leaves parts of the album starkly empty. It's almost as though some tracks are unpolished demos, with holes that a major-label producer would usually patch. Undoubtedly, this effect is on purpose, but it belies what listeners have come to expect from Thrice's sound, which at its better moments provides a wall of sound Phil Spector would envy.\nGuitarist Teppei Teranishi trades his shredding skills for thoughtful atmospherics on most of Vheissu, but he and drummer Riley Breckenridge still get to show why they're some of the best in the business on "Like Moths to Flame" and "Of Dust and Nations," which, like the album itself, seem to suffer from identity problems -- are they making a temporary departure from hardcore, or have they gone soft?\nThe band that once turned the words of poet e.e. cummings into the lyrics of a speed-metal song has not lost their ingenuity. It shines on "Music Box" and "Red Sky," the most melodic and complete tracks on the album.\nLayers upon layers of audio cannot help the listener shake the hollow echoes of the album, like something is missing. Kensrue ends the album's intro track by calling, "Remove the cancer, take back your souls"; maybe soul, for the large part, is what they're missing.