Emma Ruth Rundle has spent most of her career on the fringes of the metal scene. Besides playing guitar in prog/post-metal band Red Sparowes, the gothic folk of her solo work and Nocturnes and the spacey ambience of Marriages has always had a darkness that can’t totally be called metal, but it doesn’t quite fit outside of it.
Similarly, the thick, tar-throated sludge of Baton Rouge’s Thou has always coated over a tender melodic heart that would escape most listeners, buried as it was beneath layers of molten guitar.
On paper, there’s little in common between the two. But the collaborative album May Our Chambers Be Full proves that the two entities have much more in common than you might think.
A few months ago, I realized that despite years of guest features, tours with bands I love, and general cultural osmosis, I had never actually knowingly listened to Manchester Orchestra.
For the last twenty-three years, Sigur Rós frontman Jón Þór Birgisson, better known as simply Jónsi, has traversed the deepest nearly every span of the human experience, from the glacial joy of Agaetis Byrjun to the isolated chill of Valtari to the dense grief of Kveikur to the bounding, pastoral joy of Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. And that’s all without mentioning Sigur Rós’ more abstract works or the work of Jónsi & Alex, his ambient collaboration with his partner.
There are precious few figures in pop music history who can truly be called Icons: singular performers who are without peer. Artists like 
In the twenty-five years since the release of 
In 2002-2003, I was a sixteen-year-old emo kid who discovered all my music through scouring message boards, cross-referencing the thank yous in CD liner notes, or watching hours of Fuse TV. I was ingesting a healthy diet of Thrice, Sunny Day Real Estate, Fugazi, pre-hiatus Weezer, Zao, and the like.
There are two things that I generally don’t care about at all: radio rock and greatest hits compilations.
For a certain subset of music fans within a certain age, there are few bands as important as The Chariot. For former scene kids who put their girl jeans through their paces two-stepping in the church gym or muddied in the mosh pits of Cornerstone Music Festival, The Chariot represents the absolute epitome of mid-2000s Christcore.
Over the last few years of attending, playing, and even organizing vaguely “Christian” music festivals, I have come to a deep appreciation of Facedown Records—home of such excellent bands as