This will be a pretty quick and easy post. Last Friday, Emma Ruth Rundle released a three-song EP consisting of leftover tracks from her Engine Of Hell sessions. The collection is called Orpheus Looking Back and is available digitally, Emma has stated on social media that she does not know of any plans for a physical release.
It’s interesting to hear what got left off of the album. Engine Of Hell was my number two on my list of Albums of 2021. It was a minimal, stark effort that brought difficult themes to life instead of being sometimes hidden behind the music of past albums.
The three songs here are in keeping with the style of Engine Of Hell. It is Emma singing along to sparse instrumentation. Two feature a guitar and one has a pump organ. I will let you all guess which song has the pump organ.
Emma Ruth Rundle – Orpheus Looking Back
Released March 25, 2022 via Sargent House Records
The EP kicks off with Gilded Cage. The song has a kind of Celtic folk vibe or something, it’s a bit exotic. It seems to depict some struggle between being “like them” and feeling the rage to transcend. Emma’s singing on the track recalls Dolores O’Riordan, who I suspect is an influence on Emma’s work (sort of confirmed, I don’t know, she doesn’t tell me things). The song is very nicely done and is also over before you know it at a 2:36 runtime.
Up next is the Pump Organ Song. It is Emma and a pump organ, exactly as advertised. The song is a bleak recount of some lost love or episode. It is a little hard to tell as the work feels unfinished, but what was established here is a nice piece. I’m hopeful that Emma will use the organ again in the future as there is plenty she could do with it.
The final track on this collection is St. Non. It’s one more light, minimal number that feature’s Emma and a guitar. Non is a real saint, I had to look it up as I’m way more up on band lineups or baseball rosters than I am my saints. The song is a very quiet and honestly sweet one that does feel a bit against the grain of the more harsh vibe of the Engine Of Hell album.
All three of the songs fit the vibe of the album they were part of the session of but also aren’t quite as fleshed-out as the works on the record. Orpheus Looking Back is a nice piece to have as a further window into the Engine Of Hell sessions. It’s also very nice to end a post before the first page is filled, I don’t often get a chance to do that.
For this week’s pick I’m revisiting someone who has become my favorite artist in recent memory. She has released a wide selection of music across several projects over the past 15 years and has not been shy to explore new styles and soundscapes. Today I will be looking at her third solo album, which kicked off a sound that ran through a few records and has provided some of her most harrowing and memorable work.
Emma Ruth Rundle – Marked For Death
Released September 30, 2016 via Sargent House Records
My Favorite Tracks – Real Big Sky, Protection, Marked For Death
The record features minor-key, atmospheric passages along with at times harsh, cutting distortion that breaks through and highlights the darkness of the album’s themes. Unconventional guitars and tunings create a sound not found in many other places, if anywhere. The combination of atmosphere, noise and dark subject matter create a unique and awe-inspiring listening experience.
Marked For Death
The opener and title track establishes a tale of two lovers bound in a fatalistic way. It is not a Cinderella story, or if it is it’s one where everyone turns to ash at midnight. The song is mostly quiet and rolling, with the guitar ringing out during the chorus. It’s a song that works well both plugged in and stripped down, as the performance at the end of this post illustrates.
Protection
The noise gets turned up on the second song as Emma explores a tryst that is, well, extremely heavy. It is hard to tell on the surface if the lyrics indicate a truly transcendent love experience or if it shades at something much darker. A betting person would likely go with the latter when considering Emma’s work as a whole. The guitars go absolutely off in a noisy chorus of their own, and even in the quieter verses Emma lends a great deal of power to her vocal delivery.
Medusa
A more gentle tune that showcases the atmospheric side of Emma’s recording. The song recounts difficult dealings with someone wrapped in the symbology of the mythical Medusa. It’s one of several songs that employ a rolling and marching feel that Emma has put to great use on several albums.
Hand Of God
This song keeps things mostly quiet and is a very haunting account of someone who has fallen from grace. While Emma has often used the contrast between harsh and gentle music, here it is a contrast between a nice, mild song and very, very harrowing lyrical matter.
Heaven
Another very gentle song that also tackles matter similar to Hand Of God. This song doesn’t “feel” as desperate as the prior one, though. There is an acceptance of the loss of Heaven here and the constraints of mortality. A bit of noise builds up in a beautiful ending that apparently sees Heaven burning.
So, Come
A song that offers some allusions to traumatic events and implores the saints to come, if indeed they are supposed to. So, Come begins quietly then builds into some powerful distorted passages while Emma still seems to maintain an almost upbeat plea to these saints. “Suffer so that we may live” is invoked, but it’s not clear who is supposed to do the suffering or the living.
Furious Angel
This gorgeous song lays an atmospheric tone that almost conceals its very heavy vocals about what seems to be the end of the relationship Emma has outlined in other songs here. With the end of said relationship, Emma is caught in the rage of a furious angel, as the all-consuming nature of the relationship is all there was. The music recalls some of Emma’s shoegaze/dreampop past and uses these layered elements wonderfully.
Real Big Sky
The album’s closer strips away the layers and sonic elements to present only Emma’s voice and a distorted guitar. Other songs on the album provide sonic hiding spots from the haunting themes but Real Big Sky offers no such respite.
The song offers up a subject person who is apparently at the end of their life. The verses outline the person’s plight while the chorus hears the person sing what could be their final words. The somber, stripped-down presentation only amplifies the deep sadness found here. But there is also hope in transcendence to also be found in the ultimate journey away from mortality. The song offers a prelude of sorts to Emma’s more minimalist work on her 2021 effort Engine Of Hell, which also provides no place to escape from the inevitability of the subjects at hand.
Marked For Death is an album both beautiful and scary – it provides a variety of well-executed musical passages with which to digest the very dark themes on offer. Emma relayed in this 2016 feature with The Independent that she recorded the album after a dark period in her life and still grappled with the themes even after the album’s completion.
The album marked a period of transition in Emma’s personal life and also in her recording career. Marked For Death offered up some of the same “sonic warfare” that would be on display for her next album, 2018’s On Dark Horses. I have previously covered that album and hold it in the highest of esteem. But this album stands alongside that as a master work of music that plunges to the depths of existence and pulls out something otherworldly. While she is crafting music from a place of pain and trauma, Emma has provided a series of songs that offer an amazing listening experience.
It’s that time – the end of 2021. With any music-related posting, that necessarily entails top “of the year” lists. It’s time to get mine rolling.
I’ll do this in a few parts. Today I’m going to roll out the bulk of a Top Ten Albums list. I’ll do everything from 10 through 2 today. On Monday I’ll give extra space to my 2021 Album of the Year. And on Wednesday I’ll go over some other stuff like Song of the Year and various thoughts about music this year.
No point in wasting time, here it is – my top 9 of 10 albums for 2021.
10: Darkthrone – Eternal Hails
The old gods of black metal switch it up, much as they have over the past many years, and go full-out dungeon dank on this record. It’s part Celtic Frost worship and very awesome. Only five songs but 42 minutes of old school, depth-trawling throwdown.
9: Hypocrisy – Worship
After 8 years away, Hypocrisy returned with a set that hits all the right notes. This set is a bit more savage and in-your-face than previous, more atmospheric efforts. It’s a highlight from a band that has done little wrong in a very long career.
8: Cradle Of Filth – Existence Is Futile
The group’s 13th studio album finds the band reinvigorated and firing on all cylinders. This album blends the band’s signature sound with the present day existential crisis running through the world.
7: Asphyx – Necroceros
A bit of a tricky one here. I could’ve sworn this album came out in 2020, but everything I’m seeing indicates it was released the very first day of 2021. We’ll go with that. Anyway, another great effort from the reformed group who have been kicking ass since their somewhat unexpected return several years ago.
6: Genocide Pact – self titled
Unrelenting death metal that doesn’t take a note off from pummeling the listener. This is brutality at its finest.
5: King Woman – Celestial Blues
A spectacular record that shapes its sound from several genres to fashion a harrowing masterpiece. This album can’t be labeled by any one thing and is a work greater than the sum of its parts. Truly one of the more unique listening experiences of the year.
4: Iron Maiden – Senjutsu
The 17th studio album from the legends raised some eyebrows with song length and composition. The album saw Steve Harris reclaim the creative reigns and head in a more atmospheric, ponderous direction.
This one came out of nowhere for me and instantly reeled me in with a mix of indie rock, pop punk and plenty else going on. It has been climbing this list since I started going over it this fall.
I only really began exploring Emma’s work earlier in the year and she capped 2021 with this minimal, desolate collection of songs. Only her voice, a guitar and piano weave these tales of trauma and sorrow.
It’s been a productive past few years for Emma Ruth Rundle. Her 2018 album On Dark Horses captured a lot of attention from many circles and her 2020 collaboration with Thou, May Our Chambers Be Full, offered a work even greater than the sum of its parts.
As the decade shifted and the pandemic hit, Emma shifted gears and promised a sparse, minimal album that veers away from the sonic wars of her recent work. And she has delivered exactly that – this new album features her voice, piano, guitar and little else beyond a guest vocal and cello.
Emma Ruth Rundle – Engine Of Hell
Released November 5, 2021 via Sargent House Records
My Favorite Tracks – The Company, Return, Razor’s Edge
I could waste words on questioning if this stylistic turn is a risk or not, but there’s no need to ponder the question. While Engine Of Hell is a shift it’s certainly not a departure. Emma’s 2016 effort Marked For Death bears some similarities to this new album, with moments that are sparse and harrowing. This album might forego the effects pedals and sonic range but it fits well within the body of work Emma has already created.
This album is apparently a very intense therapy session for Emma, as she has discussed how she is processing traumatic events of her past through these songs. She adds layers to the lyrics so that the bare meaning is concealed. And that’s the point of art, of course – it doesn’t do much for anyone to just grab a guitar and bitch about how things suck. It’s the shaping and twisting of form and the resulting work that gets attention. It’s also what allows the listener to find their own meanings to the songs.
On a record where minimalism is the theme, every word sang and note played becomes important. Emma’s delivery on this record is very deliberate and methodical – each chord strummed or piano key hit seems to be there for a reason. Album opener and lead single Return showcases this deliberate form of arrangement, it seems that every note is there for a purpose. It’s a realm away from finding a decent hook or melody and then shoehorning words that sound nice on top of it.
Engine Of Hell differs from Emma’s past work in that there is no hope or triumph to be found here. The music may be gentle but the subject matter is heavier than death metal. The happy ending is either down the road or not to be found. This album isn’t for the faint of heart.
With any music, and especially a record like this that’s extremely personal yet wrapped in enough layers to keep the true meaning hidden, the listener will find their own meanings and draw their own conclusions. In my own listening, I can say that The Company and Return are the songs that hold the highest order of meaning to me. The rest of the album offers bits and pieces that resonate, but the album as a whole is a very enjoyable listen even without having some personally identifying connection with a lot of it.
Engine Of Hell is not a casual listening experience with a hit single or a feel-good vibe. It is an album to be consumed whole – and one that might consume the listener whole, depending on one’s strength of spirit. It is a beautiful, haunting piece of art from one of the best musical artists in circulation today.
This week I’m going with a recent album and one from an artist I hadn’t heard of until said album’s release. I was browsing the social sites and saw a post from Consequence, Pitchfork or whatever hipster music aggregator when I saw a write-up for a new record from an act totally unfamiliar to me. Out of curiosity I pushed play and well, now here we are with a new album of the week.
Illuminati Hotties – Let Me Do One More
Released October 1, 2021 via Snack Shack Tracks/Hopeless Records
Favorite Tracks – Pool Hopping, Joni: LA’s No. 1 Health Goth, Kickflip
Illuminati Hotties is a band formed by producer and engineer Sarah Tudzin. The music could be described as along indie rock or pop punk lines (modern genre descriptors outside of metal are kind of beyond me).
Sarah and her band have already dealt with record label problems a whole two albums in and this album was a delayed release after fulfilling contractual obligations with a thrown-together effort in 2020. It’s nice to see the same old problems in the music industry take new forms all these years later.
Let Me Do One More is a fun album with a variety of songs to fit about any mood or atmosphere. Opening track Pool Hopping sets a fun and fast tone, which is carried forward with the totally copy-and-pasteable title MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA. Things turn toward the reflective and melancholy with Threatening Each Other Re: Capitalism.
The album offers a nice mixed bag of songs, showcasing a variety of styles and themes rather than honing in on one specific thing that works and running with it. It’s kind of a throwback to when more artists explored different areas of sound rather than just reinventing the same sound many times over.
There are a lot of interesting and subtle quirks about this album – from unconventional song titles and style-shifting breaks like the spoken conclusion of uvvp. It’s clear that this isn’t just a “pick up guitar and make some noise” effort – there was some clear focus on arrangement and atmosphere. I suppose that would be expected from someone who has spent time in every part of the music-making process.
In the end, Let Me Do One More is an engaging album with a lot of fun and some tunes for thought. It’s nice to find something out of my typical music circles to enjoy. Hopefully there’s much more to come from Illuminati Hotties, whatever obstacles record labels might throw in the way.
I want to shift gears a bit on the blog and go through a handful of preview songs for upcoming albums. Some of these works have set release dates and a few others aren’t even named yet, but the acts have released singles to build hype for their new efforts. I’ll start doing this on a semi-regular basis, as I find myself with more songs than time or space presently allows. These will genre-hop through just whatever is on my radar at any given time.
Guns N Roses – Hard Skool
This is the second track from an apparent upcoming EP and the first new GnR music to feature Slash and Duff since the early 1990’s. I wasn’t in love with Absurd, the first song we got and probably a leftover from the maligned Chinese Democracy era. This song is a lot better though I won’t fall all over myself for it either. The verses drag a bit but it gets to some classic GnR in the chorus. I don’t know if this song was also one of many Axl has laying around from his protracted recording sessions or if there was more collaboration between the reunited band members.
This new EP will be more of a curiosity for me than anything but it’ll be interesting to hear what Guns N Roses has to offer the world decades after their prime.
Limp Bizkit – Dad Vibes
I wrote earlier this year about Limp Bizkit and some shifting attitudes toward them, perhaps a retro appreciation for their era and at least some calming of the hatred they’ve endured over the years. Now they’re bringing new music for the first time in a decade, perhaps the truest test of how long their 2021 renaissance will last.
I never was a real fan of the band and even if I can look back on my past hatred for them as a bit blind, I probably won’t be beating down the door of my local record store to pick this up on release day. But this song is pretty cool. It’s short, chill and still Limp Bizkit. I can appreciate it. If nothing else, it reminds me that Fred Durst and I are both getting older, and that’s ok.
Swallow The Sun – Woven Into Sorrow
I ran across this on social media last week when the song was released. Woven Into Sorrow is the lead single from the band’s new effort Moonflowers, which comes out November 19 on Century Media Records.
I’ll be honest – Swallow The Sun is one of the many bands I have heard of, but not heard. I just haven’t got to them in all my years of metalheading. Well, I’m happy to say that I’m on board now.
Woven Into Sorrow is some excellent gothic doom, or symphonic doom or whatever subset of doom a person might call this. This song is about as sad as it gets and moves into a harsh vocal passage toward the end that blends well with the song’s tone. I will absolutely be checking out the new album when it hits.
Marissa Nadler – If I Could Breath Underwater
Marissa is not an artist I’d even heard of until last month when she announced her new album The Path Of The Clouds. As it turns out she has been around a long time and has a back catalog absolutely worth checking out, a very dreamy pop-folk style, if that’s a real thing.
This song, the album’s second single, is an absolute dreamscape, gently floating into itself or perhaps everything. I’d say that this isn’t a style of music I’d normally gravitate toward, but perhaps it’s more fair to say it’s a style that I’ve just now found space to appreciate. This is another release I’ll be checking out when it hits, which in this case is October 29th.
Converge – Blood Moon
Huh, it’s new Converge. I haven’t listened to them a lot over the years but I’ll give them another spin, they’re historically very noisy and I like noise and …
… oh, hello Chelsea Wolfe, wasn’t expecting to see you here.
So this new Converge album Bloodmoon I is a collaborative effort between the band and indie queen Chelsea Wolfe. Various configurations of this lineup has performed as Blood Moon in the past and now a full album of work under the Converge banner will be realized November 19th.
I’ve only had one listen to the song so far and I’ll be playing it again, that’s for sure. This is creepy, haunting and fantastic. I guess this collaboration isn’t as unlikely as it seems, given their past live performances. But it wasn’t something I was really aware of and this song came totally out of nowhere for me. I guess that’s why we do this.
Slow Crush – Hush
2021 will go down as the year I got into shoegaze. It wasn’t a sound I’d ever really messed with besides the stuff Alcest or Deafheaven have been doing over the years. But I went full in this year after the right circumstances came together to allow me to enjoy this kind of stuff.
Slow Crush are newer to the scene, having come on in 2018 with the excellent Aurora. This song is the first single from the album Hush, out October 22nd.
This track has been out for a few months now and I’ve been jamming to it pretty regularly. It’s a beautifully done atmospheric song that absolutely nails the shoegaze pattern of leaving the music, including vocals, together to be found in layers or enjoyed as its whole. I won’t be missing this release later in October.
Hypocrisy – Chemical Whore
This is the lead single from the death metal veterans’ new album Worship, available on November 26th, appropriately Black Friday in the United States. This marks their first release in nearly 9 years as leadman Peter Tagtgren has been exploring other creative avenues through the past decade.
This excellent mid-tempo monster highlights the horrors of drug overuse, more the pharmaceutical kind than the street kind. It comes with a great video and the album should be another win for a band that have been racking up great albums since 2004. Hypocrisy is always an auto-buy for me.
Emma Ruth Rundle – Return
It’s time for the main event as far as I’m concerned. The artist I just talked about earlier this week is releasing her much-anticipated new album Engines Of Hell on November 5th. Emma has stated that this record is a sparse affair, informed by major transformations in her personal life over the past few years.
Return absolutely fits the description and is a movement away from contrast in noise and melody that marked ERR’s prior effort. This song is haunting, minimal and seems very deliberate in its delivery. It’s almost scary what the rest of the album might be like – without the use of her extensive collection of effects pedals to mask the more harrowing moments, Engines Of Hell might rip the listener’s soul right out. I’d say I’m ready but I might very well not be.
That’ll do it for this first round of upcoming releases. I’m sure I’ve forgotten more than one thing, and in the future I’ll try to tidy these up a bit and focus on the next month’s upcoming records. I left a few out that I’ll have time to get into a bit down the line. While many fans turn their attention to considering the ever-important question “What is the album of the year?” it’s worth remembering that there are other contenders to come.
Sometimes I don’t get to things right away in music. Ok, sometimes I don’t get to things right away at all. But hey, this is about the music so let’s keep on topic.
I’ve often been very guilty of not checking things out in a timely fashion. It is easier than ever to explore unheard artists through streaming platforms, YouTube, etc. And social media offers more music recommendations than a person could ever really keep up with.
And maybe that’s the problem – there’s too much. Too many artists, too many scenes, too much information. It is a problem in this day and age and it has some pretty brutal consequences sometimes. But again, this is just about the music, I’m not gonna deep-dive on some philosophical tangent about society.
Anyway, I’ve seen the name Emma Ruth Rundle around for a few years, I guess since the album I’m about to discuss came out. I first actually heard her in 2020 on her collaboration album with sludge lords Thou, May Our Chambers Be Full. I thought that was pretty cool stuff but 2020 was a psycho year for me and I didn’t have a lot of spare time to explore ERR any further.
Then earlier this year I finally found myself blessed with some spare time and a willingness to explore more artists that I hadn’t been in the right space to give a chance to previously. I drifted over to Spotify, saw the kind of cute/funny cover to this album, and pushed play.
Emma Ruth Rundle – On Dark Horses
Released September 14, 2018 via Sargent House Records
Favorite Tracks – Dead Set Eyes, Darkhorse, Fever Dreams
Holy shit, man. Holy shit.
I’ve had several landmark moments of artist and album discovery in the past. But I’ll be honest – I thought those days were behind me. I’ve heard plenty of awesome stuff over the past years but I haven’t really been hit by an album since 2007. I had figured those days were behind me and I was just going to drift along until oblivion on a nostalgia kick, as though the magic was dead and my golden age was over.
But nah, here I am again.
On Dark Horses is an absolute masterpiece. The sometimes harrowing, other times triumphant lyrics wrapped in a light/harsh contrast study soundscape is just a whole other world of music than what I normally listen to. This is definitely its own thing and exists purely outside most musical descriptors, well, besides stuff like amazing or spectacular.
For this week I’m going to take the album track-by-track, that’s a little easier for me when tackling something I’ve come into more recently.
Fever Dreams
The album opener just goes straight into how things are going to be for the next forty minutes. This song sounds exactly like what its title suggests – a fever dream. The music flows with dissonant melody while Emma’s lyrics convey the delirium and loss of reality associated with the subject matter. The song is a standout on an album full of choice songs.
Control
This song lets the music do the talking. The vocals kind of blend in to the battle between noise and light going on with the guitars. It has a shoegaze vibe to it, which would be familiar ground for ERR. But overall it’s a war of sounds that we are all winners in.
Darkhorse
One of the album’s highlight cuts, Darkhorse is a steady march toward a powerful, triumphant conclusion. Emma has discussed some of the very personal meaning behind this song in interviews. I’ll leave that sort of stuff alone since I can gather that it’s pretty deep stuff and I’m far too uninformed to offer some opinion on it.
But this song? Yeah it’s stellar. This quasi-title track is an open advertisement for how amazing this whole album is. There are some powerful lyrics in here – “smile like you mean it and just cast the light of Hell right out of here” is a gem of wordsmithing. Unlike the aural assault of Control, Darkhorse’s music contains its power and complements the vocals.
Races
We get to the album’s halfway point with a chill vibe kind of song. I wouldn’t say it meanders but it does drift along toward a celebration of the night. Having been a night owl for a lot of the past 20 years I can dig it. Even now that I’m back in total daywalker mode I can still appreciate what’s going on here. It’s a smooth, gently-flowing tune that helps balance the sometimes heavy shit going on lyrically.
Dead Set Eyes
As for that “sometimes heavy shit,” here it is. Emma has said that this song is about her leaving Los Angeles. Well, I don’t know what happened there but damn it must’ve been big.
This song leapt out at me when I first played the album. Lyrically soul-crushing and sonically monstrous, it’s the perfect song to get a metalhead on board with ERR. It’s my favorite song from the record and honestly just one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, period. Nothing else I write about it will do it any justice.
Light Song
This tune is another slow and steady march on to something. This time it’s a love song and it’s very well done. As the immortal Paris Hilton would say, “that’s hot.”
There are more songs about love than probably any other topic. It’s not my main cup of tea – to be honest, other than 80’s hair metal anthems, I’m not much of a love song guy. Most of my music collection deals with war, death and Satan.
But this is a fantastic opus about being into it with someone. The imagery of going into the water works well with the heavy yet flowing riff. It’s a different take on a love ballad and a very welcome one.
Apathy On The Indiana Border
This track is a more gently rolling musical number, quite atmospheric in nature as the riffs hang in the background. The title would indicate the song is about apathy but the density of some of the lyrics might obfuscate any clear message.
“This song took so long to write, and I still kind of hate it! Lyrically, it’s about having the intense presence of apathy following you through your life. It’s about the manifestation of inaction, and not being able to feel or do anything. It still feels somehow unnatural to me when I perform it.”
I do get that. Indifference can be a blessing or a curse, depending on circumstance. It’s at times useful but it’s an obstacle and perhaps crippling other times. I’ve had my own dance with that over time and even today I can cop to that being a factor.
As for the song I don’t agree with Emma’s assessment – I think it’s a fantastic tune, gliding along while the opaque lyrical content flows along with it.
You Don’t Have To Cry
This intense album closes on a somber, sweet number that delivers an antidote to some of the heavier stuff conjured earlier in the tracklist. There is a lot going on lyrically which I don’t entirely pick up, but I take the song at face value as a nice way to close out a monster of a record.
On Dark Horses became an instant classic in my music library and has resonated with many people since its 2018 release. I could say that I regret not checking it out when it first hit. But, given the very screwed up nature of the past few years, maybe holding off on it wasn’t the worst idea. It was an album that certainly helped ease the tension of pandemic trauma and political discord ravaging the world today. I certainly can’t complain about having it around when I needed it, that’s for sure.
Of course this album is not Emma’s only one. Exploring her other projects and other solo releases has been an absolute pleasure. And in about a month she will release a new solo album, one with an apparently different style and direction than found here or even elsewhere in her catalog. Even without the benefit of years of hindsight, I can state without reservation that Emma Ruth Rundle is one of the best artists I’ve ever heard.
The Crooked Wanderer 