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Thou: Summit
08/12/10 || Khlysty
For some reason, I always associated sludge with junk. While doom metal is inextricably joined –at least in my mind- with vast consumption of devilweed, sludge brings up images of needles, emaciated bodies, full of withdrawal ticks and burn marks on the veins –plus, everything that heroin does to the human brain. So, I was surprised when I first listened to Thou’s third outing, “Summit”, and discovered that this Baton Rouge band, while clearly entrenched into sludge, has more than misanthropic junk-infused dissonance to offer.
Knowing that you readers of GD are not very kindly disposed towards slow music, I’ll try to keep my praise of Thou’s extremely impressive record as short’n’sweet as possible. So, sure, Thou’s music is trademark sludge: slow, dirty guitars, rumbling bass, molasses-ridden drums, throat-ripping screams for vocals. But, and that’s a really huge-ass “but”, instead of following the template that their Louisiana forebearers (Eyehategod, Crowbar, etc) clearly defined –that is, mutated blues, slathered liberally with Sabbathic downtuned menace, noise and an extremely user-unfriendly ambiance-, Thou seems to follow a slightly different path.
See, the band adds a very creative dash of melody in the usual dissonant heaviness of sludge, making the songs –correction: the behemoths of songs, each lasting around nine to ten minutes…- more interesting and haunting. Either by guitar arpeggios, or by some nice and totally improbable riffing, each and every song has a distinctive melodic element, usually hidden under the trademarked dirty-and-desperate sound of sludge, an element that enticed me to listen and re-listen to “Summit”, so that I could be able to discern the ideas the band was playing around with. And, lemme tell ya, it was one hell of a rewarding experience.
Of course, this being sludge, I think that the record’s gonna be pushback-y for quite a lot of metalheadz. It’s slow, it’s long, it’s dirty, it’s misanthropic, it’s dark and it’s suffocatingly heavy. Bryan Funck’s screams carry enough hatred and desperation to ensure that the listener will search for anti-depressants after carefully exploring da groovy soundz of Thou. Plus, the production is as raw as it gets, without lapsing into garage-quality, turning the songs into nightmarish soundscapes of oppressive music. Anyway, bottom line is that Thou’s “Summit” is a great slow-and-low record that, while firmly entrenched into sludge, contains enough ideas to ensure that the discerning listener would satisfy his need for heaviness, while opening new ways of making slow music interesting. Imminently buyable and really enjoyable.
- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Gilead Media
- Website: noladiy.org/thou
- Band
- Bryan Funck: vocals
- Matthew Thudium: guitars
- Andy Gibbs: guitars
- Mitch Wells: bass
- Josh Nee: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. By endurance we conquer
- 02. Grissecon
- 03. Prometheus
- 04. Another world is inevitable
- 05. Summit revisited
- 06. Voices in the wilderness
