Thou

June 14, 2024

It’s a bit intimidating to write about a band like Thou, to be completely honest with you. Their back catalogue is large and varied; in many ways they’re hard to pin down to one particular sound or genre - which of course is a big part of their appeal, for me at least. Articulating how Thou makes me feel is a gargantuan task. Not least because members of Thou has been known to read this very newsletter and I am currently trying to think of anything but Bryan Funck reading this newsletter in order to write this newsletter that Bryan Funck will likely read. Good morning Bryan.

The reason that Thou are in the forefront of my mind right now is because a couple of weeks ago they released a new album, Umbilical. Maybe you’ve seen people talking about it already; plenty of people have written about it more eloquently than I could ever hope to. They even got a five star review in The Guardian, you guys. The headline for that review said it was “one of the finest metal records of the past decade.” Now, that is quite a claim. Metal is a vast genre, and Thou do have many fine records under their belt already.

Perhaps the vastness of the genre they inhabit and the many years of experience they have traversing it, is the thaumaturgical combination that invokes an album worthy of such high praise. Before there was Umbilical, there was slew of demos that were scrapped, deemed not good enough for human consumption. In reality, whatever those songs were, whatever they would have sounded like, they were probably fine - probably good enough to be released and still grind dozens of other bands into the dirt. But it didn’t reach the high, if at times hard to define, standards that Thou had set themselves, so into the bin it went.

I don’t know if you’ve ever spent time labouring on something - even for just a few hours - only to realise that what you’ve done is simply no good. That shelf will never be straight. The perspective on your drawing was all wrong from the start. You realise you have to put it in the bin and start over. Sometimes though we just live with the wonky shelf, sometimes we paint over the pencil lines and hope for the best. The sour flavour of compromise is somehow more bearable than the bitter taste of defeat for most of us. Not so for Thou.

By having the determination to do justice to their own ideals, Thou have crafted a record that exists as a masterclass in heaviness. They walk the well trodden path of acerbic delivery, but for all the elements that scream of heightened despair, they never untether completely. Many of the sounds and textures familiar to Thou are here - unhinged aggression and an underpinning of rumbling grunge are both present and correct - but delivered with a fast-paced, laser sharp focus that gives them an invigoratingly fresh spin. The intensity of the album is what makes it so remarkable; the split second pause in the middle of I Feel Nothing When You Cry, or the notably gentle outro to House of Ideas are deep, urgent lungfuls of air imbibed before you’re wrenched back into the thick of it.

What goes on within the boundaries of the Thou compound is something of a mystery. The alchemy that is conjured by this particular group of six musicians - with occasional contributions from others near and dear - is something very particular. Perhaps there is just enough friction within their union to give a vital impetus to their creative pursuits, stopping just short of teetering them right up and over the edge.

Thou were our Artists in Residence at Roadburn 2019. For anyone who didn’t attend, or is otherwise unfamiliar, what this means is that they performed four times over the course of the Roadburn weekend. When we announced it, the only detail we gave was that there would be “a collaborative set, a covers set, an acoustic set, and a Magus era set.” The collaborative set was with Emma Ruth Rundle and was the catalyst for their collaborative project May Our Chambers Be Full and its companion EP, The Helm of Sorrow. The covers set has become Roadburn legend. Taking place in a skatepark, Thou were joined on stage once again by Emma, as well as Nate Newton from Converge to perform a full set of Misfits covers.

Thou exceeded our expectations. They were the perfect embodiment of what an artist in residence at Roadburn should be - showcasing multiple facets of their creativity, embracing the spirit of the festival wholeheartedly. As I sat down to write about Thou today, I thought I would dip into the tale of Thou at Roadburn because it continues on beyond 2019. But in something of a fitting twist, I have been gently blindsided by Thou even whilst writing this piece. What I was going to say next is this:

Roadburn 2020 didn’t happen because of the pandemic, the same again in 2021. For 2022 we started to cautiously put together a line up, afraid that it would be cancelled again at a moment’s notice. Somewhere along the way, Bryan reached out to Walter with an idea for Thou to return to Roadburn as secret artists in residence. I wasn’t part of that conversation, but I can only assume that Walter smiled politely in complete bemusement whilst backing away. He called me afterwards to tell me about it and - as he put it when he told this story during a Q&A - I hit the roof, told him to call Bryan back immediately, and that we had to make it happen.

We did indeed make it happen, and Thou’s presence at Roadburn was a gift in a multitude of ways. Yes, we had managed to put on a festival amidst a swirling haze of doubt and trepidation but with the help of the bands that jumped with both feet into the task, we managed to make it truly special. It was an opportunity to return to the sweet embrace of community and a genuine celebration of creativity. This hit me hardest when I was watching Thou perform on the main stage with Mizmor, enrapturing 3000 people with music that had been released just that day; music that had been kept under wraps. It was a surprise set, a surprise album, forged in the crushing absence of normality. Emotion flooded my senses and I cried at the side of the stage - and then I cried some more in the toilets afterwards.

I let out great big heaving sobs in a dressing room just before their skatepark set (reprise), featuring members of Cloud Rat, Primitive Man, Full of Hell, and Lingua Ignota. I was so grateful that Thou had added an extra layer of magical feeling to the weekend. Discussing the four secret sets of 2022 whilst eating lunch with guitarist Andy Gibbs one day at the festival, Andy was marvelling too - not at the magic, but at their ability to prepare for and perform four entirely new shows. More accurately, given that there were still more performances ahead of them at that point, Andy was probably actually still doubting their ability to pull it off. Much like with the pre-Umbilical demos that never made it into being, Thou could realistically have turned up and phoned it in and people would have had a perfectly nice time, especially given the specifically fragile circumstances of the event. But instead they opted to do a full Black Sabbath covers set which blew the roof off.

All that is what I was going to say anyway… but in the course of writing this, I re-read this piece that was written in March 2021 as part of Roadburn Redux. In the absence of an in-the-flesh festival that year, we did an online edition with live broadcast performances, pre-recorded sets, video premieres, interviews, articles and more. Bryan, Andy and Walter reminisced about the now-legendary Misfits covers set. And there, at the bottom, hidden in plain sight is Bryan’s original pitch for the secret artist in residence stint that would materialise the next year. It was there all along and I have only just clocked it. Touché.

What makes Thou special to me, is that they are willing to contort in many different directions in pursuit of whatever has captured their imagination. They can re-shape, re-size and re-imagine what being Thou means from record to record. I hope they continue to shapeshift like this; I have a whimsical idea that they are part of a crop of heavy bands that are re-writing the rules - in dozens of quiet ways - of what it means to be a principled and sustainable band in this day and age. Bending to accommodate the necessities of real adult life isn’t the same thing as lying down, giving up or selling out.

If you want to read more about Thou, I heartily recommend this recent interview they did with The Quietus; I wouldn’t dream of professing to know Thou on an intimate level, but what I read there is as accurate a depiction of this exacting, self-flagellating, and truly inspiring band as I have ever read. Part of me wishes they’d stop giving themselves such a hard time, but maybe wielding their own cattle prod is the only way they know how to do it - and they do it better than anyone else ever could.

If you want to listen to Thou, then I definitely recommend you start right now with Umbilical. As well as being nervous about Bryan reading this over his breakfast, I am also somewhat paralysed by imagining what Andy will think of however I attempt to describe their musicianship. So, forgive me if it seems I am holding back a little - I am, I haven’t figured this bit out yet. I simply haven’t mastered how to express the joy, delight and pride elicited by a band that I hold in high regard without sounding glib, smug or patronising. Skipping writing about this album altogether could also have been an option of course, but how could I overlook what is potentially one of the finest metal records of the last decade when it’s right there in front of me. Also, I Googled and I couldn’t find any review that mentions the Hole easter egg on the album, so it was somewhat my duty to write this down for posterity if nothing else.

As I said at the beginning, Thou’s discography is enormous, meaning there’s plenty to get stuck into. Bandcamp recently published a very good primer of all things Thou, which is a smart place to start if you’re new here.

Thank you for reading! See you next week.

~Becky

P.S I am loathe to ask such a thing, but if you like this newsletter and think someone else might do too, then I’d really appreciate you sharing it or telling someone else about it.

Images below show Thou at Roadburn - both with the kind of audience they deserve to play to every time they step on a stage. The first image is by Jostijn Ligtvoet and the second one is by Teddie Taylor.