{"id":855205,"date":"2026-09-21T07:48:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T07:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/855205\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T07:48:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T07:48:14","slug":"emma-ruth-rundle-these-killing-times-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/855205\/","title":{"rendered":"Emma Ruth Rundle: These Killing Times Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma Ruth Rundle<\/a> is discovering that there\u2019s more to life than loneliness. Across a decade-plus of solo recordings, the Portland-based singer-songwriter has typically favored sounds of desolation and solitude. She\u2019s treated sparse arrangements of downtuned guitars and hermetic piano chords\u2014occasionally punctured by trudging percussion or thorny distortion\u2014as an abandoned landscape to wander, offering meditations on trauma, death, and destruction. Her songs have often been full of the downcast thoughts you can let yourself become consumed by when you spend too long inside your own head, something that Rundle admits she\u2019s naturally predisposed to doing. \u201cThere was a period where\u2026 I romanticized the isolated artistic hermit lifestyle a little too hard,\u201d she said in a recent interview<\/a>. \u201cIt did me more harm than good.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Rundle worked on her new album These Killing Times, she was once again confronted with a world that disappointed her. Press materials say the record was written in early 2025 during \u201cyet another climate disaster,\u201d a statement that could refer to any number of cataclysmic events. But this time, when confronting the darkness, she decided she didn\u2019t want to do it alone. Rundle worked with a hefty list of collaborators from around the world of heavy music\u2014including avant-rock guitarist Nick Reinhart, drummer Jess Gowrie (who\u2019s played with Chelsea Wolfe<\/a> and metal band Horseneck), Baroness<\/a> guitarist Gina Gleason, and her frequent collaborator Troy Zeigler, among many others. This isn\u2019t the first time Rundle has worked with friends; she once made a memorably bleak album<\/a> with the ultraprolific Louisiana metal band Thou<\/a>. Still, the communitarian effort seems to have given her new energy and perspective.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

These Killing Times cuts a particularly stark contrast to her last album, 2021\u2019s Engine of Hell<\/a>, whose stoically introspective songs bore the marks of the process that birthed them in a remote cottage in rural Wales. Make no mistake, the songs on this album are still real downers: The tempos rarely rise above a trudge, nearly every song is wrapped in distortion, and Rundle sings of pain, torture, and violence. Still, there\u2019s a sense of momentum and propulsion\u2014occasionally even playfulness\u2014that Rundle has rarely reached for.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnough,\u201d which starts with a creeping guitar line that recalls Red House Painters<\/a> at their most melancholic, builds toward grinding sludge-metal riffs and harmonized guitar heroics that feel uncharacteristically extroverted. The additional hands and ornamental arrangements add pops of color and vibrancy to Rundle\u2019s typically grayscale compositions. Even the fuzzed-out dirge \u201cHuman Kindness\u201d vibrates with life, thanks in no small part to its towering vocal harmonies and lilting string arrangement.<\/p>\n

These uplifting moments are paired with a more expansive lyrical approach. Rundle\u2019s best songs over the years have felt doomed, sung from the perspective of a narrator for whom there\u2019s no hope of escaping the misery that befalls them. But These Killing Times feels a little different; across the record, there\u2019s a clear belief in redemption. On \u201cGod\u2019s Picture,\u201d she offers prayers for deliverance; on \u201cDon\u2019t Delay Heaven,\u201d she strains toward a perfected afterlife that\u2019s just out of reach. On opener \u201cPowerless,\u201d she offers an image that feels like a mission statement for all her projects. \u201cLet me die here with a hammer in my hand,\u201d she sings. \u201cOne for smashing, one for making something better.\u201d In her eyes, death and rebirth are always intertwined. The path toward an ideal world begins with destruction.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

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