Engine of Hell
The gothic folk musician’s pitch-dark compositions are typically electric guitar-forward and swathed in reverb. Her fifth solo album, instead, focuses on the piano, an instrument that serves as a portal to Rundle’s childhood, minus the cozy nostalgia: “Down at the methadone clinic we waited/Hoping to take home your cure,” she sings on the downcast “Blooms of Oblivion,” and elsewhere, on “Body,” she watches her grandmother’s corpse be wheeled away. Plumbing the depths of a lifetime of trauma makes for a devastating affair, haunting in its vulnerability; that the collection was recorded live and acoustically, without any added effects, only adds to its intensity.
With sparse acoustic arrangements and cryptic lyrics, the songwriter’s fifth solo album feels like a series of intimate dispatches from a personal purgatory.
Emma Ruth Rundle strips back and digs deep on haunting, very solo, offering, Engine Of Hell…
2020's May Our Chambers Be Full saw Emma Ruth Rundle and Baton Rouge sludge enthusiasts Thou spin doom, gothic rock, post-grunge, and icy black metal into a potent and unforgiving opus.
Despite using only acoustic instruments, Emma Ruth Rundle's Engine of Hell is a heavy album that reaches unflinchingly back into the past.
Emma Ruth Rundle’s previous three studio albums—2014’s Some Heavy Ocean, 2016’s Marked for Death, and 2018’s On Dark Horses—established her as an uncompromising, unflinching, and visionary artist. Her work flickers and flares with a mysterious somber genius; her albums are always hauntingly beautiful and layered with moody, reverb-laden textures, which add an intensity and dark drama to her compositions. After embracing the noise during her collaboration with sludge metal band Thou on 2020’s May Our Chambers Be Full, Rundle goes for the polar opposite in terms of sonics on her latest album, Engine of Hell.
Sam Khaneka reviews the new album from singer-songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle. Read the review of Engine Of Hell here on Distorted Sound!
With Engine Of Hell, Emma Ruth Rundle has made an album that sounds like MTV Unplugged – not in a particularly good way
A review of Engine of Hell by Emma Ruth Rundle, available November 5th worldwide via Sargent House.
Emma Ruth Rundle - Engine of Hell review: From the other side of the abyss.