post metal

Record #737: Emma Ruth Rundle – Marked For Death (2016)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In the last few months, my awareness of Emma Ruth Rundle has absolutely exploded. I was introduced to her most recent solo record On Dark Horses when I was assigned it while writing for a Belgium-based review site, and even then she was only introduced to me as the guitarist from Red Sparowes.

After almost a year and a half of knowing and loving just that album, I started to dig deeper, falling in love with her alternative/post-rock/psychedelic outfit Marriages, psych-folk outfit Nocturnes (someone sell me their vinyl copy plz), and her recent collaboration with doom metallurgists Thou.

But it’s taken me until a few weeks ago to listen to any of her other solo work, and once I did, the obsession continued. Marked For Death, her second song-based solo album—and regarded by many to be her best—is a crushing work of dark, brooding Southern gothic that showcases her stunning talent as both a songwriter and an ambient architect.

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Record #729: Baroness – Yellow & Green (2012)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Image may contain: 1 personI started 2020 with the realization that Baroness could do no wrong, and that I might as well just buy their entire catalog. Red was the first record I purchased in 2020, and so there’s a certain poetry to the fact that Yellow & Green—the final missing piece in my collection—was the last I purchased.

It’s admittedly an odd choice to purchase this record last—by most accounts, Yellow & Green is their masterpiece: a massive, sprawling double album that finalizes their transformation from sludge metal heroes to genre-defying Metal Gods. It was perhaps that monstrous reputation that me tentative to approach it, but every second of this album lives up to its legacy.

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Record #727: Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou – May Our Chambers Be Full (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 2 Comments

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.

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Record #716: An Autumn For Crippled Children – Try Not To Destroy Everything You Love (2013)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

By now, long time readers will understand that I have an incredible weakness for heavy music that plays with more delicate elements. My collection is filled with these sorts of experiments, from Alcest to Zeal & Ardor—projects that hold tight to the crushing catharsis of heavy metal, but don’t shy away from adopting a sense of gentleness.

An Autumn For Crippled Children’s breakthrough album, Try Not To Destroy Everything You Love is an absolutely staggering example of this kind of music that is equal parts ear splittingly vicious and heart throbbingly sentimental.

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Record #700: Mouth of the Architect / Kenoma – Split (2006)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Speaking of lurching, post rock informed sludge metal…

Ohio’s Mouth of the Architect has long held my ear as one of the must crushing yet beautiful post metal bands around. Quietly is one of the most gorgeous and visceral records I’ve ever heard. So when a friend gave me this split, also featuring the instrumental, fellow Daytonians Kenoma, my hopes were high.

And that hope did not disappoint.

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Record #699: ISIS – Oceanic (2002)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

For the last six years, post metal heroes ISIS have been one of my favorite bands. From the first time I heard the crushing, glacial riffs of Panopticon, I was smitten. As I became more familiar with their other works, I regarded that album as a watershed moment: a turning point that would set the direction for the rest of their career, as well as direction for an entire direction of metallurigists.

A few weeks ago, I found that album’s predecessor, Oceanic, for the lowest price I’d ever seen it, so I ordered it without being totally familiar with it. And now, I must recant the narrative I’ve drawn around their discography. While Panopticon may have perfected the post-rock tinged sludge metal that they are celebrated for, Oceanic pioneered it. Continue reading →

Record #697: Mountaineer – Bloodletting (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If you’ve followed this blog at all, you’re already well aware that I have a very soft spot for a particular kind of heavy, glacial, melodic sludge metal (see: Isis, Cult of Luna, Mouth of the Architect, Spotlights, etc).

My friend Alex knows this, and so when he heard Bloodletting, the latest full length from California post metal outfit Mountaineer, his first reaction was to send me the link.

A few songs in, my first reaction  was to buy the record.  Said record has a label on it that says, “For Fans Of: Cult of Luna, Alcest, Torche, and Baroness.” That’s a pretty bold FFO if you can’t back it up. Luckily, Bloodletting proves it in spades.

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Record #688: Marriages – Salome (2015)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

There are three words that are almost guaranteed to make me pay attention to a band: “Emma. Ruth. Rundle.”

Outside of her darkly beautiful doom-folk solo material, she also has a number of other projects, such as the post-metal-meets-Pink-Floyd of Red Sparowes, the psychedelic alt-folk of Nocturnes, and this, the dark, grooving, vibey Marriages (featuring Andrew Clinco, a.k.a. Deb Demure of Drab Majesty on drums).

2015’s Salome, to date the only full length from Marriages, combines all of my favorite parts of Rundle’s separate projects into a single work that is as gorgeous as it is crushing.

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Record #674: Alcest – Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde (2007)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

After the other two members of traditional black metal band Alcest left, soon-to-be French metal icon Neige decided to use the project—or at least the name—as a vehicle for his own experimental mix of black metal, shoegaze, post rock, and gothic.

As a child, Neige would often dream that he was visiting a forest filled with glowing, enchanted creatures from another world. On Alcest’s debut full-length, the suitably titled Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde (Souvenirs from Another World), Neige explores what he’s always imagined the music of that land to sound like.

The results are just as otherworldly as advertised, though it shows mere glimpses of where Alcest would go in their now legendary career.

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Record #678: Kowloon Walled City – Container Ships (2012)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

When I first stumbled upon the wonderful post-hardcore supergroup Less Art last year, I was a little unfamiliar with the home projects of the members. Obviously, I am a longtime and die hard fan of Thrice, but I had only given a precursory listen to Curl Up and Die, and had never heard of Kowloon Walled City at all.

But, the strength of Less Art invited me to look into them, and oh, am I glad I did.

Container Ships, their 2012 sophomore record, is a patient, cerebral piece of heavy music that blends sludge metal and post-hardcore in a brilliant way that lands somewhere between ISIS and Fugazi.

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