Thou: Cutting The Cord

Ever since they emerged from the swamplands of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, THOU have made some of the most forward thinking and immense heavy music in recent memory on albums like Heathen and Magus, as well as many collaborations and other music. The band’s latest album Umbilical continues that stream of quality and sees the band taking on an even rawer approach to their music with stunning results. To celebrate the release of Umbilical, we caught up with guitarist Andy Gibbs to get the lowdown on what will undoubtedly be one of the albums of the year.

We start things off with Andy telling us how relieved he is to have Umbilical out, on what is the first full-length THOU album in six years. “I think for me, I’m mostly excited that the process of making it is done. It just took a really long time and it took a big toll. It’s a big weight off my shoulders now that it’s done, and we can start thinking about the next thing.”

Umbilical a very raw hardcore feel to it and Andy then spoke of the raw back to basics approach that the music on the album took. “I think that the intent was definitely to figure out in terms of how to do something that is on the more aggressive side, that has nods to stuff we’ve done before without sounding derivative of that stuff, or sounding like a different band altogether if we embrace the more hardcore sound. I really tried to do something that balanced those things out.”

He continues by telling about how this hardcore sound balanced with the more traditional THOU soundscape. “It definitely has some nods to some of the older stuff on there. The last track, Siege Perilous is definitely like an almost by the numbers classic THOU song, in my opinion.” 

Andy then talks about how THOU have changed as a band in the six years since 2018’s Magus album. “A million things have changed since Magus, We did collaborations. We had new band members in that time. That’s actually one of the biggest things for Umbilical, it is our drummer Tyler’s first full-length THOU album that he’s on, so writing some of this material, we were looking to highlight his capability, he’s a really technically accomplished drummer and we really wanted to write some stuff that would allow him to let loose and go crazy. I think that definitely was a huge change.”

Talk then turned to video games with THOU having contributed songs to the game Norco, then previewed the tracks on Umbilical on a demo to the new game Silenus as Andy tells us how that came about. “A longtime friend of ours came out with Norco, we contributed some songs and the original idea was for us to make music that would be included in some part of that game but the timelines didn’t work out. Then there was going to be supplemental Norco material that the songs we wrote would factor into, but we mixed that idea so then it’s like, what’s the next thing we could do with it? The game Silenus is going to be its own game in its own right, and the idea was let’s just get a demo out there and as a bonus, we’ll include some of the new THOU songs. We were always interested in doing stuff that’s a little outside of the norm in terms of record promotion because I think the average record rollout gets lost in a sea of other record rollouts.” 

He then enthuses about working on Norco and the possibility of doing more down the line. “I am a huge fan of old school video games so getting to work on the Norco stuff was really fucking cool. Myself, I would love to do more of that, as a band it would be a challenge, but not impossible!” 

Andy then continues by telling us some of his favourite games of all time. “I’m very much a late 80s, early 90s gamer person. So Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy VI, the Castlevania series. I did buy a Switch a few years back so I play Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom.” 

Andy then details the forthcoming THOU tour of Australia and New Zealand with FULL OF HELL and how excited he is to be going to that part of the world. “We’ve been trying to do Australia for six or seven years now, and every time we try to do it, something falls through or something. This will be our first time down there and it’s been a while since we’ve gone to a new place so I’m pretty excited.” 

Andy then tells us about what the next move for THOU will be when it comes to making new music. “I’m thinking really hard about what the next move but it’s tough because historically, we tend to come up with a concept but this time around, we’re going to try something different”. 

As THOU have collaborated with artists such as THE BODY, EMMA RUTH RUNDLE, and MIZMOR, we finish things off by discussing possible future collaborations. “I don’t know about collaborations, collaborations are typically a logistical nightmare but it’s all about what’s on the table, if someone I love and respect hit us up tomorrow about it, we’d have to take it in consideration.” 

Umbilical is out now via Sacred Bones.

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