Thou have announced a new album, Umbilical, due May 31 via Sacred Bones (pre-order). It’s their first proper album since 2018’s Magus and also follows their 2020 collaborative album with Emma Ruth Rundle, May Our Chambers Be Full. Here’s what the band says about it:
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.
Lead single “I Feel Nothing When You Cry” is four minutes of blackened, sludgy madness, and it’s a very promising first taste. Check it out below.
Tracklist
1 – Narcissist’s Prayer
2 – Emotional Terrorist
3 – Lonely Vigil
4 – House of Ideas
5 – I Feel Nothing When You Cry
6 – Unbidden Guest
7 – I Return as Chained and Bound to You
8 – The Promise
9 – Panic Stricken, I Flee
10 – Siege Perilous
Thou — 2024 Tour Dates
Apr 13: New Orleans, LA – Palestine Benefit at Fred Hampton Free Store
May 04: Providence, RI – AS220
Jul 28: New Orleans, LA – The Broadside (w/ The Body + Dis Fig and Nail Club)
Sep 13-15: Richmond, VA – Persistent Vision Fest
Aug 14: The Zoo – Brisbane, AU *
Aug 15: Mary’s Underground – Sydney, AU *
Aug 16: The Baso – Canberra, AU *
Aug 17: Stay Gold – Melbourne, AU *
Aug 18: Crown & Anchor – Adelaide, AU *
Aug 23: Rolling Stone – Christchurch, NZ *
Aug 24: Meow – Wellington, NZ *
Aug 25: Galatos – Auckland, NZ *
* w/ Full of Hell