New Zealand’s instrumental doom/post-metal band Thousand Limbs stream their debut album »The Aurochs«; out today via Azathoth Records!

Auckland, New Zealand based instrumental doom/post-metal band Thousand Limbs has unleashed their debut album »The Aurochs« this Friday, July 19th, 2024 via Azathoth Records.

Says the band: “Our debut album »The Aurochs« is out now and available on all platforms! Huge thank you to Dave Rhodes Productions, Primal Mastering, Sheltered Life PR, Gordiart, Kate Reddington, Jack Delgado, Amber Beaton Director, Decibel Magazine, New Noise Magazine and everyone who pre-ordered the album. We are very excited to share this album with you all.”

Tracklist:
01. A Blessed Life To Suffer
02. A Dim Light To Guide
03. Only His Shadow
04. The Aurochs – Ensnared
05. The Aurochs – Aligned
06. Evening Haze
07. Form
08. Fall Of Body And Mind
09. Beneath Soil And Stone
10. A Boundless Heart

Crafting monumental moments of crushing metal, staggering riffs, and soundscapes that build and blister in and out of existence, their journey toward greatness will continue this summer with the official worldwide release of their debut album, »The Aurochs«.

Written and produced as a ten-song interpretation of the individual woodcuts that make up Kakuan Shien’s Ten Ox-herding Pictures, both the album and Shien’s art serve to illustrate the stages of one’s passage toward awakening – as well as their subsequent return to impart learned wisdom.

“It’s a sonic interpretation of a perpetual cycle of disconnection and reconnection with a spiritual practice,” explains guitarist, Patrick Gray. “The woodcuts act as an extra-musical guide, with a recurring motif representing the lost beast in the woods, disappearing then appearing again throughout the album.”

Photo by Anna Vasilyeva-Bycroft

Following the release of two successful EP (»Woe« in 2018, 2020’s »Mara«), the band has teamed up once again with award-winning engineer Dave Rhodes and in »The Aurochs« produced a sprawling excursion through the wilderness of one’s own nature. As a narrative driven entirely by sound and passion it draws comparisons to acts like Earth, Bongripper and Neurosis, particularly on their latest single, »Fall Of Body And Mind«.

As guitarist Andrew Shaw details: “Our latest single represents the eighth woodcut in the series and conveys a sense of meditative vastness, the meeting of all and nothing. We wanted the arrangement to make use of space: creating the void and slowly filling it. Tension builds and releases as the song progresses towards its climax.”

Recorded and Mixed by Dave Rhodes.
Mastered by Luke Finlay – Primal Mastering.
Cover art by Gordiart.
Logo by Jack Delgado.

Thousand Limbs is:
Patrick Gray – Guitar & Piano
Andrew Shaw – Guitar
Nicholas Baldwin – Bass Guitar, Synthesizers, Orchestration
Stuart Harwood – Drums

Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well