Thou

The perpetually kicking and screaming Baton Rouge metal band Thou are back next month with a new album of sludgy riffage and sonic assaults on the ears.  Check out the bombastic annihilation of "I Feel Nothing When You Cry" below and pre-order the "Umbilical" LP here from Sacred Bones.

Mizmor & Thou

We've already heard Baton Rouge sludge band Thou and Portland metal band Mizmor cover Zola Jesus's "Night" with a little help from Emma Ruth Rundle for the upcoming 15th anniversary album for Sacred Bones.  It rules.  But i was unaware that the two behemoths also had a full-length collaborative record in store for us too.  It dropped to today digitally with the vinyl to follow this fall.  Check out "Drover of Man" below and pre-order "Myopia" here from Gilead Media.

Thou, Mizmor, & Emma Ruth Rundle cover Zola Jesus

Last month when Sacred Bones announced their new "Todo Muere SBXV" compilation to celebrate their 15th anniversary, one of the tracks i was most interested in hearing was Thou, Mizmor, and Emma Ruth Rundle's take on the Zola Jesus song "Night."  Well, it's out, and it's heavy and magnificent.  Check it out below and pre-order the record here.  While you're there, check out a couple of the other tracks that have been released so far, including Boris covering SQURL and Marissa Nadler covering David Lynch.  Good stuff.

Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou Cover The Cranberries

Not content with releasing one of the best albums of 2020, Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou are back with an EP for 2021 (it also came as a bonus record if you got the special edition version of "May Our Chambers Be Full").  On the upcoming "The Helm of Sorrow," the artists close things out with a cover of The Cranberries' "Hollywood."  Check it out below and pre-order it here via Sacred Bones.

Thou Covers Alice In Chains

Alice In Chains' "Dirt" is one of those quintessential '90s albums that i can hardly imagine my early teen years without.  And in just over a week, the album gets a proper tribute in the form of "Dirt Redux," featuring a slew of metal bands each taking a track from the classic record.  Kicking the whole this off is Louisiana sludge band Thou with their ripping take on "Them Bones."  It rules.  Check it out below and pre-order the album here via Magnetic Records.

 

Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou

Well this was awesome news to wake up to this morning in a world frequently devoid of awesome news.  Dark folk and metal chanteuse Emma Ruth Rundle has teamed with Louisiana sludge metal gurus Thou to create something heavy and melancholy, brutal and beautiful.  Check out "Ancestral Recall" below and pre-order the upcoming "May Our Chambers Be Full" LP here via the indispensable Sacred Bones.

Thou

One of my favorite things about Louisiana sludge metal band Thou is all of their absolutely crushing covers of '90s grunge songs, tackling the likes of Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and Pearl Jam.  But the band they seem to gravitate towards the most is Nirvana, having covered them over and over on different releases.  And now, all those covers are in one place.  Yesterday, Thou quietly released "Blessings of the Highest Order," a collection of all of their Nirvana covers.  Brutal, screeching mayhem, and i love it.  Check out "Scentless Apprentice" below and get the whole thing here from Robotic Empire.

Thou - In the Pines (AKA Where Did You Sleep Last Night?)

Black Flags Over Brooklyn was heavy metal festival held earlier this year in Brooklyn.  The event was billed as an anti-fascist and anti-racist gathering for like-minded, progressive metal heads.  I wish i could have gone.  Anyway, continuing their string of being awesome, the folks behind the fest have now put together a benefit album called "Riffs for Reproductive Justice," featuring a whole slew of different artists offering up their finest metal, hardcore punk, and dark folk songs to raise money for abortion access.  Read their statement:

'Riffs for Reproductive Justice' is a new compilation of metal, hardcore, punk, and dark folk songs from a wide range of artists who have united to raise money for an extremely important cause: abortion access.

Abortion clinics across the country are being forced to close, robbing people of the ability to access crucial healthcare services. A theocratic fascist regime is working overtime to control the bodies of those who have uteruses, to force us into unwanted pregnancies, to wrest away our human rights. We cannot stand by and let this happen. All of us—people of every gender, with every kind of body—need to fight back against this horrifying attack on bodily autonomy, by any means necessary.

This compilation is just one small effort made by a few dozen people who care, who are intimately affected by this, and who love other people who are afraid of what the future will bring. There are so many other brave individuals and groups who have been putting in work around this issue for decades, and my hope here is to raise a significant amount of funds from within the metal, punk, and overall music fan communities to allow them to continue that necessary work.

100% of proceeds from this compilation will be donated to the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAH: abortionfunds.org) and the Yellowhammer Fund (yellowhammerfund.org). Donation receipts will be posted in a Dropbox folder which will be shared with the bands and with anyone who requests access.

Say it loud, with distortion, with fucking feeling:
ABORTION IS HEALTH CARE.
HEALTH CARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT.
WE WON’T GO BACK.

This is a really important cause, and all of your dollars will help.  Plus, the compilation has some excellent artists on it, from Violet Cold to Emma Ruth Rundle to Ails, as well as the first track that caught my ear, a blistering and massive cover of Leadbelly's "In the Pines" by Louisiana sludge metal band Thou.  It basically counts as another Nirvana cover too.  Check it out below and get the whole thing here.  Do it!

Ragana and Thou

Louisiana sludge metal band Thou is having one hell of a productive year, having already released three vastly different EPs and a career defining LP.  And now they've got a split 12" out with fellow noise makers, Oakland's Ragana.  The two artist's "Let Our Names Be Forgotten" split is dedicated to the people lost in the Ghost Ship fire and sounds like an aching, solemn blend of Americana and metal.  Get the record here from An Out Recordings, and listen to both Ragana's "Inviolate" and Thou's "The Fool Who Thought He Was King" below.

Thou

Baton Rouge sludge metal band Thou are looking to have a very, very, very busy summer, having already released a droney, noisy mess of an EP earlier this month with "The House Primordial," a new EP, the dark and acoustic-centric "Inconsolable," drops officially tomorrow.  But that's not all!  The band also has a third EP on the way in July called "Rhea Sylvia" which the band describes as melodic grunge, a kind of Alice In Chains homage.  But that's still not all!  August will see the release of the band's fifth full-length of what is sure to be a crushing colossus of doom called "Magus."  Stream "Inconsolable" below, download it here, and pre-order the vinyl here from Community Records.



Then, listen to "The Only Law" from "Rhea Sylvia," pre-order the download here, and pre-order the vinyl here from Deathwish Inc.



And finally, listen to "The Changeling Prince" from "Magus," pre-order the download here, and pre-order the vinyl here from Sacred Bones.



Whew!  That's a lot of Thou.  Be careful out there.

Thou - The House Primordial

Louisiana sludge metal band Thou released a surprise album this morning, the new full-length "The House Primordial" on Robotic Empire.  The record is perfect match for the weather in Central Texas this week, the thick and ugly metal bursts pairing well with the soup of gray clouds and mist currently hanging over my home.  Listen to the whole thing below, download it here, and be on the lookout for a physical edition sometime in the near future.

Thou - Don't Let It Bring You Down

Benefit albums and songs are popping up all over the place these days (we are after all experiencing the crumbling of western civilization as we know it), but here's another one.  Being that i am a Louisiana native, the "Many Waters" compilation is one i can solidly get behind.  Featuring an array of Baton Rouge artists like Thou, Caddywhompus, SUMAC, Old Man Gloom, and more and benefiting the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank, the compilation looks to aide folks affected by last year's devastating floods in the area.  Get it here via Thrill Jockey and listen to Thou's take on Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down" below.

Thou - Eyehatethou

Thou are the latest group to bring you an awesome free single courtesy of Adult Swim.  "Eyehatethou" is a tribute of sorts (at least in title) to fellow Louisianan metalheads Eyehategod, and it's a heavy, bombastic piece of sludge.  Start your day off right.  Listen and download below.

The Body & Thou cover Nine Inch Nails

Fresh off of an excellent 2014, sludge metal act Thou are teaming with experimental noise band The Body, who also had a pretty good 2014, for an album of black and rotting sound called "You, Whom I Have Always Hated."  The collaboration is due later this month on Thrill Jockey, but you can listen to the blistering, barely recognizable cover to Nine Inch Nails' "Terrible Lie" below.

Thou - Milk It

I know i just posted a blistering Nirvana cover by Baton Rouge sludge metal band Thou the other day, but they supplied another for the "In Utero" tribute that came out on Record Store Day...and it's just cave-your-head-in awesome.  Listen to "Milk It" below and quiver.  You should be able to order a standard edition from Robotic Empire Records.

Thou - I Hate Myself and I Want to Die

I've been really, really into "Heathen," the latest LP from Baton Rouge's brutal metal act Thou, and lo and behold the prolific sludge dirge purveyors are gracing us with another release, "The Sacrifice" EP on Robotic Empire.  The songs were recorded at the same time as "Heathen," but are a little more up-tempo...and there's an excellent cover of Nirvana's "I Hate Myself and I Want to Die" to close the thing.  It's pretty raucous and fantastic.  Listen below and grab the record here.

Thou

Thou hail from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  The band creates often beautiful, often brutal dirges, a forward moving, progressive take on sludgy metal and ambient doom.  "Heathen" comes out next week via Gilead Media, and it's just a piece of work, an album meant to be consumed as a whole.  March back into the swamp and lose yourself in the muck and slime.  Nature is the devil's church.  Listen to "Free Will" below.