Thunder and Consolation

[jackroadkill]

Listened to T&C in the van on the way home tonight and was again struck by how great a record it is...  I wasn't in a position to be surprised by it when it was released, as I was still in short trousers and listening to Tina Turner with my Dad then.  However, I think that it's a masterpiece in so many ways.  There's such a burst of creativity captured therein, but not just in terms of feeling but songwriting too.  The arrangements are sublime and the sound very powerful without being overcrowded (recorded on tape!) and dynamics were not sacrificed in the name of cleverness.

I'm not sure if it's my favourite NMA album, as Ghost Of Cain, No Rest, Vengeance and Strange Brotherhood all compete with it strongly, but if I had to pick a defining NMA moment it would be Green and Grey being played during the 30th anniversary shows in Nottingham and it reducing me to tears in a heartbeat.

[Guillaume]

Like I said - I'm not just hearing it here: this 'best since Thunder' - It's been journalistic speak for years

Just lazy journalistic stuff who probably never listened to NMA's albums since "Thunder"...another review in a german magazine proclaimed that BDAW was NMA's best album since "The love of hopeless causes".
IMO BDAW is slightly better than TIAGD so i'd say that "it's NMA's best album since HIGH" 

[patrick65]

IMO, Thunder & Consolation is a perfect album, full of rage and passion.
Fantastic, energetic, poetic....
Intense and powerful music.
The whole album is very consistent, and all tracks are "flowing".
A classic one !

[lostockboy]

In my opinion T & C stood out as the previous 3 LP's, Vengeance, No Rest and  The Ghost of Cain were of a similar vein and probably from The White coats ep which was the release before T and C they started to move in a different direction.  I myself loved it for lot's of reason some very personal and since then although I liked Purity, Love Of Hopeless Causes and TIAGD it still ranks as my favorite release. Although I was still buying the CDs and going to watch them through Eight, Carnival and High, they were never popular with me.  I can't compare it to the new Lp as I don't get paid until next week     

[Strangler]

IMO, Thunder & Consolation is a perfect album, full of rage and passion.
Fantastic, energetic, poetic....
Intense and powerful music.
The whole album is very consistent, and all tracks are "flowing".
A classic one !

I would personally have to agree with this post as for me it's their most complete work to date!

[Impuri-D]

I think it was the perfect amalgam of the themes the band had been developing up to that point. It was an album at odds with the world it percieved around it. They had always sung about political/coorporate abuse, and also the self imposed limitations of British lack of imagination/aspiration, but T&C really drew those strands together and showed how difficult it is to balance ambition and conscience, and how to make peace with the hypocricy most must exibit in both disliking, and being part of, a societal structure we dont feel really works.

To this day, the lyrics in all the songs are possibly even more relevant now than when released.

I was 15 years old when it came out, and growing up in a welsh town near the mountains, knowing that I would have to leave to make a life for myself after being spat out of school, it spoke so directly to me at the time that I looked to it for comfort as others may look to a religious text for guidance in troubled times.

[Willard]

I don't have much to add beyond I just like it the best.  It's my favorite rock album of all time, and 225 is my favorite rock song of all time.  I still get chills when I hear it start up.

I had Ghost of Cain first on second or third hand cassette, then by chance found Thunder and Consolation cassette around its time of release (and eventually both on cd).  I was very hesitant to search out more, because I had been burned many times (and have been since) by thinking one great album by a band would lead me to other good works by that band. I listened to both of those albums more than any other I had combined, and that probably holds true to this day.

 I actually didn't acquire any more NMA until around the time of Eight, when I found the NMA website and shop, and ordered the whole lot of them.  Then came Lost Songs, Navigating By the Stars...

Not one NMA album I don't look to, but Thunder and Consolation is still my favorite. 

[Guillaume]

I think it was the perfect amalgam of the themes the band had been developing up to that point. It was an album at odds with the world it percieved around it. They had always sung about political/coorporate abuse, and also the self imposed limitations of British lack of imagination/aspiration, but T&C really drew those strands together and showed how difficult it is to balance ambition and conscience, and how to make peace with the hypocricy most must exibit in both disliking, and being part of, a societal structure we dont feel really works.

To this day, the lyrics in all the songs are possibly even more relevant now than when released.

I was 15 years old when it came out, and growing up in a welsh town near the mountains, knowing that I would have to leave to make a life for myself after being spat out of school, it spoke so directly to me at the time that I looked to it for comfort as others may look to a religious text for guidance in troubled times.

Very well said.
"Thunder and consolation" is a bit NMA's bible!

[jackroadkill]

I was 15 years old when it came out, and growing up in a welsh town near the mountains, knowing that I would have to leave to make a life for myself after being spat out of school,

Same here - but I didn't manage to get away.  Where were you living then?  Wish I'd had T and C then to listen to and absorb.

[Fatalist]

fascinating thread, T&C is a classic by any band's standards, but I too love the later material - Carnival has always been a big favourite, with Eight and SB once I got it. The new album is growing on me by the day, had it on loud as hell tonight, and the power is like it's on delay, you don't get it the first few listens, it comes through like a great curry, not after the first mouthful but once you've had a few and it's got to work. Many if not most of NMA's albums are, for me, masterpieces, BDAW is joining that illustrious output. There is no one but no one else out there who for me make such great, meaningful, poetic, melodic, thought provoking yet stirring music and I doubt there ever will be. Roll on the tour dates. Lucky Europe getting first dibs

[sozbot]

Thunder and Consolation was my introduction to New Model Army - four years ago. Took me a little while to "get" it, but I did like it immediately.

When I heard No Rest and Ghost of Cain, I liked them better, for a while. I think, actually, every NMA album has gone through a period of being my favourite. Except TIAGD, which for some reason, I like but don't love. Maybe I need to listen to it a bit more frequently!

But... T&C is usually the album I play when friends are interested in hearing some NMA for the first time. I've converted quite a few this way, too. 

It's also the album I sent to a friend when he was going through a rough time, and he sent me a heartfelt message thanking me, and saying how much it had helped... and it's since become one of his favourite albums.

There's something special about it.

[Impuri-D]

Same here - but I didn't manage to get away.  Where were you living then?  Wish I'd had T and C then to listen to and absorb.

Llandudno in North Wales 

[jackroadkill]

Llandudno in North Wales 

I'm in Newtown, mid Wales, so I know what you mean.  There's very litle round here to keep the young in the area.  Of everyone I went to school with that I'm still in touch with or know of, only one other person is still in the area.

[Master Ray]

As someone who spent so many childhood holidays in Llandudno, can I just say I love that town...

[Impuri-D]

Its an amazing place. Very lucky to have grown up there. But there was very little to do in the teen/tweenage years other than smoke weed, drink, fight, and if lucky, get laid. Not that such things are without merit or enjoyment, but it just gets to be limiting, and every weekend is just a mission to punish your physiology into oblivion.

And as for work, if you were lucky enough to have a job that didnt finish with the end of the tourist season, then you got treated like shit, and paid like a slave, because they knew you could not risk leaving or losing a full time job as they were so scarce.

Everyone else signed on, worked cash in hand for the hotels and tourist traps in the summer, and then lived on supernoodles and luck from October to Easter.

I ended up going to the local tech college and learning a trade that led me to work in Cambridge. In the first week I was here, I saw more jobs advertised in shop windows than there were cards in the 'dudno job centre.

My parents still live back there, and I visit a few times a year, and its always lovely to go back to the old stomping ground, but its a lot better being a visitor than an inmate