thou

2020 Year End

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For all of the personal, political, and global calamity of the hellacious year that was 2020, there was a lot of great music that came out. Like…a LOT. 

It makes sense: with tours, festivals, and live shows canceled, most bands turned to the studio instead. The result is perhaps the most challenging year to quantify into a nice, neat list.

But that hasn’t stopped me from trying.

And while I often cop out and just make a list of all the music I’ve purchased, this year is difficult because I’ve purchased all of this music this year, on one format or another.

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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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