Thou

Born in the swampy humidity of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the stoner/sludge metal band Thou combine massive scale with relentless productivity. Their music fuses the shuddering heaviness of doom and the oppressive atmospherics of black metal, resulting in a monolithic sound that often feels inescapable. The group has upheld a strictly D.I.Y. approach by booking their own tours and offering their recordings as free downloads. After establishing their core sound on 2008’s Peasant, they pursued greater risks on later albums such as 2010’s Summit and 2014’s Heathen. Partnerships with like-minded outfit the Body yielded the collaborative releases Released from Love (2014) and You, Whom I Have Always Hated (2015). Three EPs issued in 2018 examined distinct influences that were later woven together on the fifth full-length, Magus. Additional full-length collaborations appeared with Emma Ruth Rundle on 2020’s May Our Chambers Be Full and with Mizmor on 2022’s Myopia, while numerous cover versions were gathered on A Primer of Holy Words and the all-Nirvana collection Blessings of the Highest Order. The hardcore-punk-inflected Umbilical arrived in 2024.

Guitarists Andy Gibbs and Matthew Thudium, bassist Mitch Wells, and drummer Terry Gulino formed Thou in 2005. After Bryan Funck joined on vocals in 2007, the band issued its debut full-length, Tyrant. The following year brought Peasant along with multiple splits and the EPs Malfeasance Retribution, To Carry a Stone, and The Retaliation of the Immutable Force of Nature. Two further EPs, 2009’s Through the Empires of the Eternal Void and 2010’s Baton Rouge/You Have Much to Answer For, preceded the more experimental third album, Summit, also released in 2010; around that time Josh Nee replaced Gulino on drums. Three 2011 EPs—The Archer and the Owle, Big City, and To the Chaos Wizard Youth—followed.

After a quieter stretch that produced only a pair of splits, Thou returned in 2014 with the epic and heavy fourth album Heathen, their first to feature cleanly sung vocals and acoustic guitars. Ceremonies of Humiliation, a triple-LP compilation drawn from split releases, appeared shortly afterward, later expanded to a double-CD edition. That same year the band issued the limited-edition collaborative EP Released from Love with doom duo the Body on Vinyl Rites; the project was expanded the next year and reissued by Thrill Jockey as You, Whom I Have Always Hated/Released from Love.

Following three years of relative quiet, Thou resurfaced in 2018 with Tyler Coburn replacing Nee and an abundance of new material across multiple formats. A split LP with the HIRS Collective, I Have Become Your Pupil, paid tribute to Nirvana. Ahead of the fifth full-length, three EPs explored individual styles: The House Primordial emphasized noise and drone, Inconsolable focused on stark acoustic folk, and Rhea Sylvia delved into grunge. These were later compiled as Ceremonies of Consolidation. Magus ultimately integrated all of those elements. Soon after, Thou and Ragana released the split EP Let Our Names Be Forgotten in memory of the victims of the 2016 Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland, California. Another EP compilation, Ceremonies of Repetition, surfaced in 2019. The Nirvana-covers collection Blessings of the Highest Order and A Primer of Holy Words, featuring takes on Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains among others, received digital releases in 2020.

In 2020 Thou joined evocative post-rock artist Emma Ruth Rundle for the doomy post-grunge album May Our Chambers Be Full. Its companion piece, the four-song EP The Helm of Sorrow, appeared in January 2021. July brought Hightower, a digital anthology of split tracks and older songs re-recorded by the current lineup. The band contributed to the 2022 video-game soundtrack Norco and issued Myopia, a collaboration with one-man doom project Mizmor. Howling Mine released the additional-covers EP They Don’t Love You Like I Love You that year, while Sacred Bones issued a physical edition of A Primer of Holy Words; the label later gave Blessings of the Highest Order its first vinyl pressing in 2024. Umbilical, Thou’s first original full-length in six years, emerged at the end of May, drawing inspiration from obscure 1990s hardcore imprints such as Vermiform and Ebullition.