I read online recently a comment that stuck with me.

A friend of a friend, in the black void that is Facebook, loudly proclaimed that “all new music sucks” and it got me thinking…

First of all, no it doesn’t.

Second of all…  what?

This got me to pondering and like many who have pondered before me, and many who actually pay for the music they like on iTunes..

It wasn’t until I saw an unrelated comment made by another friend of mine, Dylan Garrett Smith who said that if you think all new music sucks, that you simply aren’t listening to the right stuff and that there’s a whole legion of artists out there creating wonderful stuff.

And he’s right.

Emma Ruth Rundle is one of those artists. Though she is not a “new” artist per say.. This is her second solo offering, and she has done work with Marriages, Nocturnes, and Red Sparowes.

Do you like music that is unapologetically dark, unironically hopeful and mournful and yet has lyrics that you can decipher?

I love metal, that much should be plainly obvious, but I also love being able to put on music and engage in some thoughtful meditation at the ends of my days.  Chelsea Wolfe, Ides of Gemini, Lucifer..  they’ve been my go to female fronted dark singer songwriter music.  If I see horrible things at work, like patients covered in radiation burns, I can come home and put Abyss on my turntable and let those purple burnt hands loosen their grip on my psyche.

I’m protective of these creators of gentle darkness, simply because of what this music does for me.  I don’t often find music that allows me to relax fully into it’s open arms and Emma Ruth Rundle is a new artist whose music allows exactly this.

“Marked For Death” is her second solo album and from the opening title track it wove it’s way into my head.

Rundle has a wonderful voice, breathy and strong. She evokes some of the similar vocal qualities to Chelsea Wolfe and ranges from the most beautiful angelic seraphim to breathy and painful.

What has never worked for me in singer songwriters is that wonderful all encompassing happiness.  I’m a darkly minded person.  My depression colors my life and as such I am so penultimately drawn to music that is brooding in nature.

Though this music fits the singer songwriter girl and her guitar image, the sound is so vastly different.  This slight girl has a strong unwavering voice and this startling vulnerability that permeates through this amble through mortality and the starkness of humanity.

Rundle employs similar wall of sound techniques to bathe the listener in equal parts distortion and darkness and the whole thing is a monumental success.

The music does not come out and punch you, but rather is like the sound of the forest that calls us home.  It weaves around you like an arachnid spinning a web of sound, candor, and pain.

I think this is what comes through to me so succintly about this music is that there is a great deal of pain present and the pain is so FUCKING real.  It doesn’t hide behind niceties, it is simply raw and I think that is what really gets to me.

There’s shame here and with it this openness that really is what I understand best.

What bears up under this pain is this strong unmutable resilience.  Rundle’s voice hesitates but does not crack.  The wanting is so strong and real.

Travelling in the same shoes as Chelsea Wolfe, Rundle is currently touring Europe with Wovenhand.

If you’re a darkly minded dreamer, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of “Marked For Death”.  It comes out September 30th

Emma Ruth Rundle is one to watch and I look forward to seeing more from this lady in the future.