Thou and MJ Guider
I have to admit I’ve had trouble keeping track of Baton Rouge band Thou since their 2007 debut Tyrant, which featured the powerful Halford-esque vocals of hardcore vet Bryan Funck. However, every time I’ve come across Thou songs on various online playlists since then, I keep having to check if it’s not another completely different band sharing the same name. I just skipped through a few dozen tracks, including several EPs and albums Summit (2010), Heathen (2014), and their just-released fifth full-length Magus, and I still feel like I’ve been pranked with a house moniker being hung on several utterly unrelated groups. They seem most at home with what people call doom or sludge metal, but they also do acoustic (and I mean Byrdsy acoustic, not Black Sabbath unplugged, sometimes with female guest vocals), ambient (at one point, I’d swear I was listening to vintage Hawkwind), and the vocals can encompass anything from angry Cookie Monster to King Diamond on Xanax. As such, it’s hard to know what to expect when they play the Che Café on December 13, where the bill includes New Orleans ambient pop project MJ Guider (aka Melissa Guion, who’ll be backed by a touring band) and Miserable (aka Kristina Esfandiari of King Woman).