For a while it seemed like Baton Rouge's Thou were the most prolific band in heavy music, as between 2007 and 2012 they released a staggering 3 full-length albums, 7 EPs and 11 splits, mostly on DIY labels, on just about every format imaginable. My own collection of their recorded work is sizeable, but far, far from complete.
It's important to note that this level of output is not merely some capitalistic need to flood the market, nor some noise-artist habit of recording every tiny idea that ever occurs to them. The band's punk ethics ensure that each recording is never less than essential, and released via a variety of trustworthy DIY labels, who all place incredible importance on the quality of each release.
Considering the last anyone heard from Thou was a scorching Soundgarden cover released via the Hell Comes Home 7" subscription series almost 2 years ago, and that it has been 4 years since their last full-length release, the rich, sprawling Summit, is no mere coincidence.
Their daunting discography is comprised of many different facets of the band, from their expert cover versions of everyone from Black Sabbath to Minor Threat (put through the ringer to come out sounding entirely their own), to their penchant for stand-alone releases containing songs that didn't quite fit anywhere else (either thematically or owing to their track length).
However, each of their full-length albums has had a definite intended theme running throughout; from Tyrant and Peasant's concern with the systems of oppression used to control the majority for the benefit of the few, to Summit's attempts to transcend that oppression, to defy and confront those who would shackle you.
After a quiet couple of years, Thou have returned with their 4th full-length album: the towering, majestic Heathen.
What is immediately apparent is that this is more than just another doom album. In an ideal, more open-minded world, it would transcend the limitations of genre and be heard by a far larger swathe of the population than it actually will be. This is music meant to inspire thought; to do more than make you bang your head, but use it.
In terms of theme, Heathen seems to be an atavistic rallying cry, raging against the decades - centuries! - of social conditioning that will inevitably lead mankind to its own end, and an acknowledgement of our species' total inconsequence. Though its mysteries are yet to be fully unravelled, I'm sure with repeated listens will come many revelations as to what we are being asked to consider.
14-minute opener 'Free Will' starts out in familiar musical territory, with screes of feedback giving way to plaintively plucked chords and the ebb and flow of distortion and drums. The band maintain this loose structure until drummer Josh Nee begins to beat a steady march and the guitars settling into a trance-like rhythm. When vocalist Bryan Funck's feral rasp enters the fray, it is with an opening lyric that seems to capture the very raison d'être of this band, a rallying cry to "Open your eyes and exalt!". The lyrics touch on the band's usual themes of defiance and the rejection of society, with an emphasis seemingly put upon the seizing of control your own life, for the sake of life itself, to fully experience it in all it's finite glory. Doom has never sounded so life-affirming.
Following that opener comes 'Dawn', the first of three Sabbathian instrumental interludes throughout the album. These lushly-textured tracks serve to act as momentary respite between enormous slabs of tectonically heavy doom, and do so with all the fleeting, shimmering beauty of thawing frost.
'Feral Faun' follows on in a similar vein, it's opening minutes a gradual swelling of guitars and ever-building percussion, before the track erupts in one of those spine-tingling riffs that guitarists Andy Gibbs and Matthew Thudium have been perfecting for years. If you're at all familiar with the band, all I have to say is it's as climactic and beautiful as 3 minutes and 16 seconds into 'I Was Ignored, And Judged, And Cast Down', and you'll know what I mean. The riff varies little throughout the track, until towards the end when it slowly deteriorates and eventually collapses into the feedback.
By contrast 'Into The Marshlands' is chock full of great riffs, with plenty of nice 'n' chewy funeral doom string bends to boot. Lyrics like "Flee the dying fortress of civilization, besieged on all sides by wild nature. Hope and contentment will not be found in its manicured lawns and cultivated fields. We were weaned from the nourishment of Natureʼs breast and abandoned to the cruel orphanage of modern society.", growled over some of the nastiest sludge going, are a perfect example of Thou's ability to combine the cerebral and the visceral. Basically, if Thoreau-esque meditations on a return to nature aren't quite your thing, there's a closing riff so fucking monumental that you'll want to hear nothing else for days.
'Clarity' is another plaintive palette-cleansing instrumental, before Nee's colossal drums announce 'At The Foot Of Mount Driskill', a track which manages to encompass lumbering rhythms and moments of fragile melody. The lyrics speak further to mankind's inconsequential existence, of our utter irrelevance within the universe, and even within our own planet. The world will still be turning when you're gone, indeed. The music could not be better suited to such a weighty topic, the crushing enormity of the riffs driving home Funck's screams into the abyss.
It's no secret that Thou take more inspiration from the grunge era than the concurrent sludge scene of the time, and this can be heard in the the blown-out tone of 'In Defiance Of The Sages', which has a definite tinge of Kim Thayil in the alternately chugging and twisting of the guitars. Funck's call to destroy all notions of history, to forget mankind's many follies in the hope that we can start again may mostly fall on deaf ears, but the strength of his conviction is never more apparent than in his apoplectic delivery here.
'Take Off Your Skin And Dance In Your Bones' completes the triad of instrumentals, its downright delicate layers of gently lapping guitar leading into the barren soundscape of 'Immorality Dictates'. The track eventually begins in earnest with slowly fingerpicked notes, and the haunting vocals of contributing vocalist Emily McWilliams (sounding here like the spectre of PJ Harvey). Compositionally sparse, the track progresses with a structure more akin to a gradual uncoiling than any sort of building momentum, with serpentine guitar motifs interwoven throughout. With relatively little to offer in terms of heaviness (distortion accounts for perhaps a third of the track's 10 minute running time), this is some of the Thou's most adventurous work to date. Should the band continue, it's a direction I would love to see them explore further.
Final track 'Ode To Physical Pain' unfolds with Carlson-esque glaciality, a loosely assembled collection of cyclical guitars and cymbal taps, until Funck's earth-sundering roar shatters any semblance of tranquility. It's only in these closing minutes that you may realise that this album is 74 minutes long, so utterly does it draw you in.
With the release of Heathen, Thou have taken their own unique brand of doom out of the doldrums, and scaled such lofty heights that it will be almost impossible for any other heavy record to be as truly important as this in 2014.
