Thou feel like a band you should know what you’re gonna get next, but you never will. While categorically lumped into sludge, a genre that pictures being stuck in a mire with a matching sound of treacle-slow dross, there’s a constant level of surprise that Thou and the scene’s torchbearers instil to make it one of the unsung subgenre heroes in the metal world. From complex 10-minute-plus epics, to the acoustic folk of the Inconsolable EP and a love for grunge that extends to sporadic Nirvana live covers, Thou epitomise DIY mentality and a near-endless well of creativity.
It has been a period of relative quiet on the original material front, especially felt after nearly 20 consistent years of quality drops. Since the addition of KC Stafford and Tyler Coburn in 2018 and the pandemic’s outstanding Emma Ruth Rundle collaboration, not much could prepare anyone for Umbilical being an album’s worth of hardcore-rooted heavy hitters. Far dirtier and less grandiose than the likes of Heathen or Magus, Brian Funck and co. see this intentional return in sound as a refresher and a reflective mirror to their twenty-something selves, or, as the band put it themselves in press releases: “this record is most especially for the weaklings and malingerers, burdened by capricious indulgence, hunched by the deep wounds of compromise, shuffling in limp approximation, desperately reaching back towards integrity and conviction.” Okay then!
Umbilical works perfectly well with this self-referential idea—the band’s plan to craft more cathartic and emotion-laden compositions being in vain. A new set of caveman riffs ironically takes stabs at showgoers only expecting the ‘bring the riff back slower’ deal, and Thou are laughing all the way, with it being no accident that the trademark Doré album artwork depicts King Louis VII’s defeat during the Second Crusade. Luckily we’ve all known full well that their more stripped back sludge has always reached the upper echelons of heavy music anyway. Skinwalker and Smoke Pigs still rage and the pre-release singles were a wonderful slap in the face. Immediately Narcissist’s Prayer forgets about more majestic compositions, opening the record with a repeated motif glossed with other elements of trudge, and Funck’s rasp feels like a spiky herbal remedy. The line “it’s time to die!” would sound like a comic book villain quote if he didn’t come across as so genuinely menacing.
Then again, his near-catchy “sea of chaos” refrain has stuck in the mind since being unfurled on lead single I Feel Nothing When You Cry. It’s an ambivalent centrepiece that juggles inner peace with stubbornness— “when I’vе walked in the garden, when everything’s quiet / I am impervious, I am impervious.”—remarkably more inward than the lyrics of decaying societies that rattle through their discography. But Funck’s prose and delivery still bludgeons, while sung backing vocals on The Promise do wonders too. That track’s been elevated to new heights this way, alongside an added feedback-squealing section to elongate its earlier incarnation from Thou’s Adult Swim Festival 2021 set, retaining all the bite of that balaclava-clad recording. A similar form of padded-out respite features in House Of Ideas, a speed run track that transforms into a heady showcase of the band’s triple guitar splendour. It successfully succeeds Lonely Vigil, featuring that characteristic low end going at a snail’s pace and dripping with goo, while Coburn’s drums sound like he’s picked up his sticks at the end of a marathon. Even switching doomy guitars to cleaner channels does little to mimic the usual effect of ‘black metal sounding like surf rock.’ It still sounds damn evil.
Thou full-lengths (at least since Summit) have rewarded repeat listeners that can discover nuances in unfurling 75 minute epics. Going for full blows this time, they’ve instead captured the battering ram impact of their EPs and compilation albums and injected some chaotic (and borderline fun?) moods onto the original formula, even if it is damningly self-reflective of their younger days. This is perhaps best encapsulated on I Return As Chained And Bound To You, thematically linked in title and musical stylings to their enduring hit Fucking Chained To The Bottom Of The Ocean, harkening to former sounds but ramping them up past boiling point. And with the Southern-tinged strut of Panic Stricken, I Flee, there was clearly never an end to the band’s penchant for savagery and bop in equal measure.
When we’ve come to expect the Baton Rouge band to start venturing far beyond their roots, they’re showing us there’s still buckets of lifeblood and reinvention in their purest grotty form. It only serves to keep whatever they may cook up down the line a complete mystery, and until that happens, we have another bountiful batch of hard as hell tracks that pack more of the Thou mythos we’re all just lucky to have in the first place, let alone for so long.
For fans of: Cloud Rat, The Body, Conan
‘Umbilical’ by Thou is released on 31st May on Sacred Bones Records.
Words by Elliot Burr
