Brutal slow burning metal from the Baton Rouge’s most prolific band Thou. I’ve posted one of their earlier releases for a few reasons. The first is that they have a new album available for pre-order and I’m highly recommending it; and the second reason is that if you go to the band’s bandcamp page you can download a whole slew of stuff for whatever price you see fit. This, of course, coupled with the fact that “Heathen” is barely a month old so both of the releases in this post are pretty much brand new.
Imagine Russian Circles, Earth and Explosions in the sky meeting up with Deafheaven. The music pushes forward with all of its weight while throat shredding vocals fight to be heard. With a 14+ minute track like “Free Will” there is plenty of time for an expansive buildup, and several contrasting sections of equally sludgy metal.
From just earlier this year “Heathen,” above, features 10 songs, with nearly half of them over 10 minutes in duration. Album opener and “At the Foot of Mt. Drisskill” feature more of the pummeling end of the spectrum while some of the shorter tracks such as “Dawn,” “Clarity,” and “Take off your skin and dance in your bones” clearly show a more plaintive side of the band’s songwriting with delicate guitar soliloquies draped in reverb and delay. Truly some beautiful stuff going on in those shorter tracks that provides a nice counterbalance to the heavier elements displayed on much of the rest of the album.
According to the press release the newest offering is going to be a little different: “Eschewing the crawl found on most of their long-players and upping the tempo a bit while retaining their well renowned doom and roar. Several new bludgeoners (“New Orleans Is a Hole,” “Pill,” and “Eulogy”) are joined with the masterful drone of “I Believe Because It Is Impossible” and, per usual, a ferocious Nirvana cover, this time putting “I Hate Myself and I Want to Die” through their apocalyptic grinder.”
You can hear the new release in its entirety below:
Definitely head over and pre-order “The Sacrifice” right now and then go over to the Thou bandcamp and download a bunch of their other stuff. If you order directly from Robotic Empire you can get $5 off if you buy “The Sacrifice” with their “Baton Rouge” EP. The new one is also going to be released on tape.
