Of all the releases set for this year from Thou, the split with Cower was the one I never really saw coming. Even once Thou's .rars went online (and by event, on my iPod), my more frequent jams were selections from the perfect To The Chaos Wizard Youth, a Baton Rouge You Have Much To Answer For doppelganger and The Archer & The Owle EP which collects various previously recorded tracks including an ungodly, awe-inspiring take on Nirvana's Something In The Way. Truthfully, the first thing I really even actually liked about Cower...was Thou's cover of Get Me Out on their side.
With that said...
This music inspires raw, addicting emotional response from within. To be sure, I've tested it beyond the confines of my room, as it has mostly spun endlessly on my turntable since I first received my copy in the mail. A circumstance due in some part to the fact that my notebook PC has ceased to function, and therefore, hindering my ability to continue to rip my vinyl and cassettes. There are several other notebook PCs in the house, but all belong to someone else...my father.
So I here I sit in my father's chair, on my father's laptop because Cower, particularly this batch of song-ery, was so damn important to me that I hi-jacked the com, broke my personal rule about not downloading even iTunes on this thing and took the 21st century audiophile culture by the balls. So two software-installs and 2 1/2 attempts at actually recording the fucker to rip later, we're bakin'. Cos by this point, frankly, I'm sick of listening to this awesomeness in my little room, by myself. Certain music sounds better alone. Like drone. But this is -mostly- not very drone-y, so the desire to test it on other human subjects increases upon repeated listens in solitude. Who better to level with than other metal/vinyl enthusiasts that I know personally?
Responses were enthusiastic and positive, leading to inquiries about CDs and Mp3s, so naturally it became a priority to get digital. So far as I know, this is the only digital copy of it yet to surface. And I'm pretty ok with the quality of the rip here. Mainly because any Cower song sounds good dirty, dried and cracking out of shitty speakers just as well as your car stereo system personally pimpin'stalled by Xzibit. Not as great as the masters, to be sure. But I don't have those.
What I do have is the gorgeous red vinyl and beautiful layout of artwork that came with this wonderous array of lavish hardcore, punctuated with jedi-smooth execution of virtually any brand of rock-metal-riffery that either steers the piece into Tazmanian orgies of snare-hat yadayada or cuts the umbilical and intravenous flows so that the breathing becomes a death-rattle-heavy, labored series of aspirations. When paying attention to the often solidly stated lines, the goal of the erratic musical phrasing here becomes obvious: a clever, but also comfortable mise en scene for each attitude change as vocalist Jakob Enger spits and sings his chosen word about abandonment of homestead, disatisfaction of self-abusing work ethic and pretty much anything else you can be pissed off about.
Now, part of my point in boasting my acquisition of the record is that by this time, most of the copies have sold. And if they're sittin stale anywhere, hopefully they wont be for long after people who didn't show up for Thou hear what Cower put on the other side. Both bands murder their peers, patrons and by-standers at every turn. Here's Act I. Enjoy.
\m/
