siLLy puPPy The sludge metal scene may have had its origins in 80s California hardcore punk bands and 90s Seattle grunge but no other place has nurtured it into the gloomy ugly beast that it has become like Lousiana, USA. After all if it weren’t for bands like Eyehategod, Crowbar and Acid Bath the genre never would’ve blossomed into the gift that keeps on giving to the modern era. Must be the swamp gas wafting off those Louisiana bayous or something! While the Baton Rouge based THOU wasn’t exactly part of the original cajun country scene, the band sprang to life in 2005 and has been quite productive releasing numerous albums, splits and EPs and garnering a wider audience as time passes as it takes the unadulterated sounds of brutal sludge metal into the 2020s. The band is the perfect example of modern sludge metal with captivating covert art and a rampaging extremism not heard since bands like Iron Monkey, early Mastodon or Neurosis with their other New Orleans sludge bros included in that list as well.

The band has delivered one of its finest albums of its career in 2024 with its sixth full-length studio album UMBILICAL which has been garnering rave reviews as one of the best metal albums to have emerged in recent years and while such claims seem to be a dime a dozen in this diverse day of varying opinions and array of tastes, in the case of THOU’s latest effort all the brouhaha around the band’s newest album is actually well founded. Like many of the band’s albums, UMBILICAL has been released with a variety of album covers, three in this case with completely different cover art for the CD and vinyl and yet another for the digital downloads. Personally i prefer the band’s album covers that depict black and white scenes from war times and other historical despair from antiquity. Preferring to call themselves grunge rather than sludge metal (well Ok whatever!), UMBILICAL does indeed display more aspects of its ancestry than other sludge metal bands with Alice In Chains chugs, good old fashioned Nirvana inspired self-loathing and at times a rather Stone Temple Pilots simplicity.

But let’s get real here, despite nods to the past in the course of ten caustic distortion-drenched tracks, THOU is the epitome of doom metal infused sludge metal delivering all the misanthropic attributes of what makes the genre distinct, unique and reverberating into the extremities of guitar feedback. THOU is also one of the most angry sounding of the sludge metal world by far with Bryan Funck’s raging screamed vocals that give you a sore throat by merely listening. Add to that the exaggerated use of creepy slow tempos out of the Eyehategod playbook with the occasional more energetic outbursts of adrenalized speedy romps. It’s classic 90s sludge metal through and through but done so well that it makes you remember the days when sludge metal was pure and impregnated with that classic 90s annihilation and pure depressive extirpation. In the modern era where most sludge metal has hybridized with prog, post-rock or dark ambient sounds, THOU emphasizes sludge metal’s punk and grunge origins better than most.

Sure experimental metal and avant-garde forays are always nice evolutionary branches to explore as they create completely different mood settings in hitherto unexplored soundscape crafting but there’s something about unadulterated sludge metal that just resonates so wickedly well with the psyche as if it is the absolute panacea of a cathartic release of pent up rage that goes along with living in the modern world where absolutely everything seems dysfunctional and in decline. While many acts such as Cult of Luna, Intronaut and even Neurosis jumped off this bandwagon decades ago, THOU has continued to remain true to its sludge metal origins and in the process has garnered a slow and steady ascent as one of the guardians of the old school of sludge metal majesty. And it’s not hard to hear why on UMBILICAL as the band delivers one amp splitting guitar squeal after another with vocals so insanely intense as to qualify as scary.

Oh how THOU hath delivered a multitude of musical majesties yond resonates liketh a flame beckoning for an airy gust of inspiration the likes of which bloweth aught competition by the wayside. Rejoice in the beckoning quipping of the art of musical resonance yond captivated by the incessant floweth of the exquisite resonating sounds of sludge purity. Heavy denseness suffocating thy senses liketh a blackened tornado of souls in anguish in pure musical form yond hath been unleashed onto the world in the finest of art forms called UMBILICAL so finely constructed yond coequal Shakespeare himself wouldst tremble in awe at the sheer magnitude of the album upon us anon. For alloweth t beest writ yond the reveled anguish unveiling itself through the pyroclastic floweth of torturous textures and melancholic malaise shall reverberate in the most pleasing of ways as THOU hath polished its musical charm liketh the finest of silver in all of the kingdom.

Necrotica Something I’ve always loved about Emma Ruth Rundle is her versatility and willingness to do whatever the hell she wants musically. She's done everything from ambient to folk to doom to sludge to post rock to just about everything in between, and pretty much every project she’s brought her style to has flourished and succeeded in its own way. Whether it be her unique guitar work in post-rock group Red Sparowes or her more mellow folk-laden solo work, her greatest idiosyncrasy as a songwriter is the fact that her career never becomes static. Case in point: collaborating with Thou. On paper, it seems like a strange combination; I can’t think of a band Rundle has worked with that’s more crushing and intense than Thou, and you’d almost expect the latter’s sludgy riffs to be at odds with her singing and playing style. But such is not the case, as the “beauty-meets-brutality” aesthetic is exactly what makes this project work.

The Helm of Sorrow is an excellent continuation of the sound Rundle and Thou built together with last year’s May Our Chambers Be Full, still keeping with the latter’s melding of sorrow and intensity. The biggest thing that this collaboration benefits from is the members’ keen sense of dynamics; the music is meticulously composed to account for all the right emotional peaks and valleys, as is important for a lot of doom and post metal. In fact, opener “Orphan Limbs” is almost entirely based around Rundle singing cleanly over soft droning passages, whose guitar is reminiscent of Red House Painters’ brand of slowcore (Down Colorful Hill in particular). Only at roughly the last minute does the band erupt in a volcano of steamrolling guitars and shrieking vocals, and the long buildup just heightens the resonance of the payoff. This is the first time on the entire album we hear this level of intensity, and the slow build within the grim ambiance effectively keeps you on edge the whole time. But this isn’t the only way the dynamics of the record are experimented; “Crone Dance” is pretty much unceasing in its ferocity, and yet Rundle’s lovely vocal inflections add a strange melodicism to such an unrelenting series of sludge riffs. It helps, too, that the guitar tone is absolutely incredible here; it strikes a wonderfully odd middle ground between violent and textured, so you get something that’s equal parts harsh and compelling. And when Rundle and Bryan Funck start singing together on the remaining two tracks “Recurrence” and “Hollywood" (the latter being a Cranberries cover), it starts bringing to mind a certain approach that quickly got run into the ground in a lot of gothic metal: the “beauty-and-the-beast” approach. But I find there’s a difference here, as it feels like it’s done much more in service to the atmosphere rather than to be gimmicky. The downcast riffs are constantly emitting a sense of despair while the mix of clean and harsh vocals brings that perfect balance of sadness and anger; it really feels like I’m listening to “She Painted Fire Across the Skyline Pt. 1” by Agalloch again for the first time.

At this point, it surprises me a bit that Emma Ruth Rundle hasn’t been fully brought onboard as a member of Thou yet. Their respective approaches to these records seem meant for each other, and it’s a wonderful feeling when styles that are normally meant to clash can be brought together so beautifully. Let’s hope we can get another full-length of this kind of music, because 21 minutes - even for an EP - simply feels too short for how great the material is.