It’s hard to not talk about Thou and sound like a dude. Whenever I listen to them, I’ll go full Keanu Reeves, muttering, “woah,” or turn to someone and say, “This is heavy.”
The Baton Rouge/New Orleans-based metal band has earned its spot among one of the nation’s top metal bands, thanks to never-ending acclaim and relentless touring.
None of the members would agree with that assessment.
Perhaps proof of the band’s hard work came when it received a nomination for Best Heavy Metal/Hard Rock Group in the Big Easy Music Awards.
“I was pretty shocked that anyone involved with that knew who we were,” drummer Josh Nee says. “We didn’t really think we had a shot in hell at winning.”
The other two bands nominated? Mountain of Wizard and Down. The former is a NOLA metal institution featuring former members of Pantera.
“We saw it as Down had this thing locked up,” Nee says.
When the awards took place Monday night, some members of Thou attended, and what follows is insanely surreal, as if Zoolander and heavy metal mixed to create a laugh-about-it-later spectacle.
I’ll let Nee tell the story, which begins with Big Easy Music Award presenters R&B and hip-hop DJ Wild Will and Bounce diva Big Freedia calling out the aforementioned hard rock nominees.
“So Freedia says, ‘And the winner is Thou,’ but Freedia has a Southern drawl. Admittedly, it could’ve gone either way. She could’ve said Down, but they started to play one of our songs. [Bassist] Mitch [Wells] gets to the stage first, and I noticed that Down has made their way to the podium.
About the time Mitch gets halfway across the stage, Down is starting their acceptance speech. We’re freaking out. [Vocalist] Bryan [Funck] just turned around and walked right out of the building. People were yelling at them to get off the stage. There were people yelling at us, telling us to shut up…
So Down gave a speech, and we sat there. They carried our trophy around for 20 minutes after the fact.
We slowly got information that we, in fact, won. We didn’t know what to do at that point. So, I’m sitting in the row, and a guy from Down taps me on the shoulder, tells me, ‘Hey, we’ve got something of yours.’ They’re all super apologetic. Everyone was super-nice.
In the course of talking to [Down drummer] Jimmy Bower, who is considered the godfather of southern metal, he misheard me at some point and thought I called him old. He got kind of aggro on me, and was saying, ‘Call me old again.’ I just laughed it off and patted him on the back, but he got more intense, grabbed my tie and started to walk towards the door.
It got super-weird there for a second.”
There was no fight, and Nee really didn’t know what was happening. After laughing off Bower once more and pushing him away, Nee and the rest of Thou went back inside. The night wrapped up with New Orleans jazz legends jamming the night.
Afterwards, Thou and Down made nice. After all, the guys from Thou are too nice to be all, “Hey, gimme my award!” However, Nee was a little disappointed.
“All I wanted to say was ‘thanks’ to those who supported me,” Nee says. “I was disappointed because I felt like that got robbed. That was what I wanted to do.”
I have a feeling Thou and Nee will get the chance to say “thanks” in the coming year. In 2013, Thou will release its fourth full-length this summer and a 12-inch EP split with The Body.
