Album Review: Engine of Hell by Emma Ruth Rundle

From the other side of the abyss. I remember being petrified, sitting alone on the cold floor of what used to be the living room of the house where I had spent most of my life. Lights were dim, and the night wind howled through the open windows with a gentle late summer breeze. It was September 2019, my mum had died three days ago, and my dad, standing accused of having let her die by the rest of my family, had been consequently punished with exile.

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As one of the most exciting and vital artists currently operating in what would ordinarily be deemed as "heavy" music, Emma Ruth Rundle has consistently delivered albums, projects and collaborations that not only tug at the emotions, but that also rattle the inner ear with volume and distortion. Of course volume and distortion are not the only ways to bring the heavy, and with her latest album, Rundle has stripped everything back as far as possible. On these songs, she’s accompanied only by piano, guitar, and occasionally some delicate strings.

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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.

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Emma Ruth Rundle lives on a gloomy planet. Drop a needle on one of her records and imagine her shuffling down an otherwise sunny street beneath her own personal raincloud, shivering in an oversized trench coat. The clouds gather as you listen, and before long, darkness has fallen. Follow her voice through the night into a sprawling cemetery where a new monster lurks behind each tombstone: a black dog here, a medusa there, a nightmarish whisper-scream further down the row.

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