Thou’s Next Album Umbilical Coming Next Month, First Single Released
The world of doom hasn’t been the same since the experimentally-minded members of Thou burst onto the scene back in 2005. Like an unknown horror plodding out of the bayou, the band’s sludgy Louisiana roots show up in everything they do. Case and point is the newly released track “I Feel Nothing When You Cry,” released this morning along with the announcement of a new album titled Umbilical.
Set for release on May 31 via Sacred Bones, Umbilical is the band’s first non-collaborative effort since their 2019 album Magus. Packed with 10 new tracks, the band says the first single is a dark and dirty look at “what it means to exist within and without a rigid morality.”
“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.”
Umbilical will be released on May 31, but you can preorder your copy today.
Umbilical Digital & CD Track Listing:
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
Umbilical Physical Track List:
LP Side A
1 – Narcissist’s Prayer
2 – Emotional Terrorist
3 – Lonely Vigil
4 – House of Ideas
LP Side B
5 – I Return as Chained and Bound to You
6 – The Promise
7 – Panic Stricken, I Flee
8 – Siege Perilous
7″ Tracks
1 – I Feel Nothing When You Cry
2 – Unbidden Guest
