Thou announce new album ‘Umbilical’

April 10, 2024 James Weaver

THOU have announced a new album!

Titled Umbilical, the upcoming album from the American sludge metal band is the long-awaited follow-up to 2018’s Magus, and is scheduled to be released in May this year, via Sacred Bones.

Although the band have released collaborative albums with EMMA RUTH RUNDLE [2020’s May Our Chambers Be Full and 2021’s The Helm Of Sorrow EP] and MIZMOR [2022’s Myopia], the upcoming album will be the band’s first new record of original music since 2018’s effort.

Speaking about the upcoming album, the band shares, “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.”

Alongside the announcement of the new album, THOU have released a new song from the upcoming album; I Feel Nothing When You Cry. Speaking about the new song, the band shares, “a throwaway mantra scraped from the necrotic skin of syndicated television. A lugubrious nod to our favourite commode-crooning diva, one of her most diabolically terse lines. With the sweet, sultry whispers of a legendary New Orleans faerie. This might be as close as we’ll get to a positive, youth crew anthem. ‘This song has nothing original or of value. It’s a steady beat for dancing feet. You got what you wanted, now say the words…'”

Listen to I Feel Nothing When You Cry here:

Also, you can view both the track list and artwork for the upcoming new album below:

Track List:

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