Last month, Louisiana extreme music collective THOU confirmed the follow-up to their introductory LP, Magus with the news of Umbilical - an effort some six years in the making. The presentation would serve as the band first new showing since their hugely ambitious split with Emma Ruth Rundle in 2020's May Our Chambers Be Full.
Emphatically marking their return, THOU introduced the full length with "I Feel Nothing When You Cry" - sourcing the most effective elements of metallic extremity on a torrent of a track. The release officially began the band's sophomore full length campaign with the May 31st arrival of the album due out via Sacred Bones.
Sharing a second preview from the release, THOU has debuted another caustic performance on the track, "Unbidden Guest". The walloping near 4-minute track features powerful showing, anchored by vocalist's Bryan Funck's menacing presence. Funck shared of the single, "Physical deterioration by way of psychological disarray. Retreading a well-worn path of self grievance. Othering mental illness and learned behaviour in order to crush them under the dominance of epistemic willpower. 'The last time you cried, who'd you think was inside?'"
The band's homage to the confrontational backbone of 90's DIY hardcore punk, Umbilical falls in line with the likes Disrupt, Nausea and Assück - tapping into musical extremity as a means of vehement dispute and poignant protest.
Offering a direct summation of the record and the band's continued disposition, Thou collectively shared of the record in a statement.
"They've called us anarchists, criminals, foreign meddlers, lunatics, dispossessed, relativists, utilitarians, egoists, passion maximizers, ascetics, negators of everything. Clearly, the "Thou" experiment is never going to appeal to audiences who demand that art rigorously enforce a coherent and righteous worldview.
And yet, are we not ourselves constrained by our own rigid morality? In those quiet moments of deep contemplation, when the bargains and concessions are thoroughly examined, when we yield before the Judging Eye--what is the summation of our choices? If the unspoiled self beyond the immensity of time were given voice, what pronouncements would be made? What would such an internal audit yield? What undeniable character would be revealed?
This record is for the radicals, the crackpots, the exiles who have escaped the wasteland of capitulation. This record is for the militants and zealots refusing to surrender to comforts, to practicalities, to thirty pieces of silver. And this record is most especially for the weaklings and malingerers, burdened by capricious indulgence, hunched by the deep wounds of compromise, shuffling in limp approximation, desperately reaching back towards integrity and conviction."
Umbilical arrives May 31st via Sacred Bones. Check the artwork and tracklist below. Order the album - HERE
See the current list of live dates for THOU below.
