FUSE TV - Thrice's Dustin Kensrue on Comeback Album, Twitter Trolls & 'Stage Three' for the Band

Shortly after Thrice dropped Major/Minor in the autumn of 2011, it became clear it'd be their last album for quite awhile. The Irvine, Calif. four-piece announced that an indefinite hiatus would follow a spring 2012 farewell tour. Fortunately, we didn't have to wait too too long: 2015 saw a series of festival reunion gigs, and now To Be Everywhere Is to Be Nowhere is suddenly due on May 27 on Vagrant Records.

Vocalist and guitarist Dustin Kensrue spoke with Fuse about the band's socially charged comeback single "Blood on the Sand," the pressure of expectations, the 2016 political landscape and what's next for Thrice.

Fuse: Did you guys feel a lot of pressure for this record? You've never gone longer than two years between releases.
Dustin Kensrue: No. I think we've gotten pretty good at just doing what we want. That was something we always talked about, but then realized over time it's something you're continually cleaning out of your system, and with practice you get better. We're much more internally driven to push ourselves and write songs we think are great. It's not completely oblivious to anything external, but it becomes disingenuous to try to write what you think people want to hear. It's never gonna go well.

You guys started out with this post-hardcore, pop-punk–ish, Warped Tour–friendly sound and grew into being your own unique, not easily categorizable rock band. 
There was a long incubation for us to not settle on a sound but settle on what it felt like for us to be a band, in a sense. I don't know how to exactly describe it. Doing Vheissu [the 2005 follow-up to Thrice's '03 debut The Artist in the Ambulance], which was kind of our biggest jump, we were pushing ourselves, like, "Look, we felt like last time we were rushed and we're doing what we want to do exactly and then getting all the way there." Then we did [The Alchemy Index, a concept album with four discs based on four elements], which was this huge learning thing, spreading ourselves out, and then coming back and playing Beggars. 

Through all of that, we have a good understanding of who we are as musicians individually and as a group. I don't know that this new record sounds like a huge jump. It's very different from Major/Minor or Beggars, but I feel like it's not this giant move. It feels comfortable for us, not in a lazy way, but like, "Yes, this is who we are, this is what we're playing." The next record will probably sound different, because we hate doing the same thing twice.