By: Jay
Hampshire
Album Type: Full Length
Date
Released:
31/08/2018
Label: Sacred Bones Records
What lurks at its buried heart, as with
much of Thou’s work, is a surprising positivity that’s belied by the ugliness
and raw visceral spite that surrounds it – this work is, for all its crushing
weight, effortlessly uplifting, cathartic and even motivational. Another vital
release by one of the most vital bands in extreme music.
‘Magus’
CD//DD//LP track listing:
1.
Inward
2.
My Brother Caliban
3.
Transcending Dualities
4.
The Changeling Prince
5.
Sovereign Self
6.
Divine Will
7. In the Kingdom of Meaning
8.
Greater Invocation of Disgust
9.
Elimination Rhetoric
10.
The Law Which Compels
11.
Supremacy
The Review:
Sometimes
art can be a daunting prospect, a towering, inaccessible edifice of grandiose
scope. It can cow the unprepared and deter the unwary. Think of those who have
meant to read Melville but balked at the density of Moby Dick, have longed to
delve into the canon of a serial drama but are paralysed into inaction by the
sheer number of episodes.
This
is where we find ourselves with Baton
Rouge’s premier doomed out sludge slingers Thou.
Since their formation in 2005 they’ve exhibited a blistering work ethic that’s
seen them churn out (according to Metal Archives) forty one separate demos,
splits, compilations, EPs, singles and full lengths (that’s an average of
around three releases a year, for you metal maths fans). Four of these have
been released in the last nine months alone.
And it isn’t a simple case of quantity of quality either; each Thou
release, hell, every Thou song is heaving under the weight of more
riffs than most bands can conjure up in their entire life span. For the
neophyte, picking a place to start would seem futile. Latest full length ‘Magus’
might not be the most accessible foothold, weighing in at over seventy minutes
long, but as a pure distillation of what the five piece can do, it stands
shoulder to shoulder among the best of their oeuvre.
Opener
‘Inward’ lulls with a false sense of
security, the melancholic creeping notes taking on a sub-black metal lilt
before it opens up into a stately, processional main riff. Alternating between
this grander section and moments of claustrophobic, tunnel dredging chug, it’s
a velvet wrapped sledgehammer of restless density. ‘My Brother Caliban’ offers brief respite with tension building
electronics before ‘Transcending
Dualities’ drags us down into the choking waters of doom, guitars shifting
and squirming through cracks in the dense chord onslaught of the instrumental
trawl.
‘The Changeling Prince’ is fittingly
regal, with lush, majestic chord progressions waging pitched battle with
rolling chugs, Bryan Funck bringing things crashing down with his scalded
shriek of “behind the mask, another mask” ad infinitum. ‘Sovereign Self’ picks
up the pace, gentle guitars and vulnerable vocals suddenly exploding with a
jarring shift into thick riffs and tribal tom work. ‘Diving Will’ drifts with dreamlike, ethereal vocals before ‘In The Kingdom Of Meaning’
swings in with lurching, meandering layers that build to an inexorable climb.
‘Greater Invocation Of Disgust’ drips
with scuzzy, moody bass, uneasily shifting on the back of an infectious drum
groove and squealing guitar protests. ‘Elimination
Rhetoric’ stabs with atonal guitars, swaying into a hazy solo before
buckling under its own weight into a bloated chug.
By
the time you reach the zenith of sprawling closer ‘Supremacy’, all but the most hardened aural pilgrims will doubtless
be suffering from ‘riff fatigue’. ‘Magus’ is a gauntlet, a crust of straining
musculature beneath which an endless chasm of nuance and reward lurks. You
could stay too long in its stygian depths and risk madness, or skim the surface
and come away satisfied. What lurks at its buried heart, as with much of Thou’s
work, is a surprising positivity that’s belied by the ugliness and raw visceral
spite that surrounds it – this work is, for all its crushing weight,
effortlessly uplifting, cathartic and even motivational. Another vital release
by one of the most vital bands in extreme music.
“Magus’
is available here
