The Illusion of Safety is Thrice's second full length album, released in 2002 on Sub City Records. The album was recorded in Beltsville, Maryland. A portion of the proceeds made by this CD was donated to A Place Called Home, a non-profit youth center in South Central Los Angeles.

Track listing

• All music by Thrice, all lyrics by Dustin Kensrue
• "Kill Me Quickly" – 2:46
• "A Subtle Dagger" – 1:48
• "See You in the Shallows" – 2:35
• "Betrayal is a Symptom" – 2:49
• "Deadbolt" – 3:00
• "In Years to Come" – 2:16
• "The Red Death" – 2:14
• "A Living Dance Upon Dead Minds" – 3:32
• "Where Idols Once Stood" – 3:08
• "Trust" – 2:54
• "To Awake and Avenge the Dead" – 3:06
• "So Strange I Remember You" – 3:42
• "The Beltsville Crucible" – 4:37

Links to other media

"The Red Death" is based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death". The lyrics to "A Living Dance Upon Dead Minds" were taken from the E. E. Cummings poem "But if a Living Dance Upon Dead Minds...". The final book of C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy was titled "That Hideous Strength". "Trust" may bear a surface resemblance to the short story "The Birthmark" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Kensrue has also said that "A Subtle Dagger" is not at all a reference to Philip Pullman's novel The Subtle Knife, and that he had no awareness of the novel when he wrote the lyrics to the song. An acoustic version of "Trust" appeared on the 2003 Fearless Records compilation album Punk Goes Acoustic. "The Illusion of Safety" along with "The Artist in The Ambulance" were recorded in Beltsville, Maryland. "The Beltsville Crucible" was named after it.

Personnel

• Dustin Kensrue - vocals, guitar
• Teppei Teranishi - guitar
• Eddie Breckenridge - bass guitar
• Riley Breckenridge - drums
• Brian McTernan - production, engineering
• Alan Douches - mastering