Thou - Heathen  mp3  320k   ak2014 What we got...
Of all the extreme metal beasts wandering the musical underworld, black metal and doom metal are among the most fearsome and strange. From the darkest depths of the human psyche these creatures arose, boring their way towards the light from frostbitten forests and sweltering swamps. The latter gave us early doom mavens Exhorder and Eyehategod, but somewhere down the line Louisiana birthed some truly terrifying monsters like Thou. A quintet specializing in music designed to break souls, Thou has tempered its blackened doom for nine years through three albums and a menagerie of EPs and splits. At the core of Thou’s ideology is a distaste for societal constructs; an abhorrence of the artificial paradigms ruling our world. Heathen, then, is both a logical continuation – and the boldest chapter yet – of that treatise on humanity’s true face.

Despite the band’s black metal label, Thou spends most of Heathen in a grisly mire between doom and post-metal, a landscape dominated by the kills of Rorcal and early Neurosis. Opener “Free Will” makes Thou’s mission abundantly clear: tearing down its audience’s psychological walls, notion by notion and thought by thought. The track churns and swirls for over fourteen tortuous minutes, its grimy guitar arrangements growing increasingly monolithic until its life finally slips away. Toward the end of a rather long exposition, things begin to sound almost hopeful until vocalist Bryan Funck arrives to restore order, his mid-range rasp cutting through the din just enough to be deciphered by the trained ear. What Funck lacks in range he makes up for in ferocity and tone, as his vocals are highly consistent in timbre and distortion throughout Heathen – think Ihsahn tuned down a fifth.
1.
	
Free Will 14:35
	
	
	
2.
	
Dawn 01:18
	
	
	
3.
	
Feral Faun 09:26
	
	
	
4.
	
Into the Marshlands 06:58
	
	
	
5.
	
Clarity 00:45
	
	
	
6.
	
At the Foot of Mt. Drisskill 11:19
	
	
	
7.
	
Wolfi Landstreicher, - In Defiance of the Sages 05:32
	
	
	
8.
	
Take Off Your Skin and Dance in Your Bones 02:12
	
	
	
9.
	
Immorality Dictates 10:30
	
	
	
10.
	
Ode to Physical Pain 11:46