METALSUCKS EXCLUSIVE STREAM: THOU’S NEW EP, THE ARCHER AND THE OWLE
A new Thou release is as expected and shows up as reliably often as a new season, so it can be a little hard to keep track of them. Being wonderful, generous, and generally superior people, we here at MetalSucks wants to help by streaming their new EP, The Archer and The Owle, right here, right now.
Picking up — quite literally — where their last full length left off, it’s full of the band’s distinctive dredged melody and the torturous crawl of their sludge/doom riffs. And while I want to rip on it for being packed with filler — it consists of one new song, two older ones, and three covers — it makes sense. Summit’s closer “Voices in the Wilderness” gets a new context in which to breathe, and benefits greatly: as a finale to an hour-plus album’s worth of doom, the listener may reach it tapped out. But as the opener of an EP, it unfolds lusciously, alternating between scorched earth sludge, metalgaze beauty, and folky intros and outros. “Summit Reprise” works the same as it does on Summit, as a breather and mood builder, as well as re-imagining “Wilderness”‘s melodic themes. The band also prop up Kurt Cobain’s ode to homeless people befriending animals and enjoying a grass-and-fish-centric diet for a fairly straightfoward (yet fairy revelatory) cover of “Something in the Way,” as well as introducing the world to Pygmy Lush with two covers of their songs at the end of the EP. “Bonnet Carré,” Archer and the Owle‘s sole new track, is vintage Thou, full of mile-high lumbering doom riffs and shattered arpeggios dragged across ten-plus minutes. Even in semi-abbreviated form (thirty-eight minutes, a full length for most bands, a brief excursion for these guys), there’s plenty for Thou fans to latch on to (or re-affiliate themselves with) here.
The Archer and the Owle is available for preorder on colored 12″ vinyl and cassette (!) via Robotic Empire. It comes out August 2. And make sure to check out the band’s site for Thou updates and an obscene amount of free music. And speaking of free music, check out new Thou below.
[this streaming promotion has ended]
-SO
