Emma Ruth Rundle These Killing Times

Critic's Take

Emma Ruth Rundle's These Killing Times feels like a career-defining culmination, and the best tracks - notably “Powerless” and “Don’t Delay Heaven” - showcase her vocal metamorphosis, from tenderness to outrage. The opener, “Powerless”, is a masterclass in dynamics and emotional clarity, piano and grit alternating to dramatic effect. “Don’t Delay Heaven” drips with dark romance and prayerful longing, a performance that anchors the album's emotional core. Elsewhere, “Enough” and “Human Kindness” extend that vocal range into ritualistic intensity and atmospheric breadth, making these the best songs on These Killing Times by virtue of their expressive force and compositional polish.

Key Points

• “Powerless” is best for its masterful vocal dynamics and evocative lyricism.
• The album’s core strength is Rundle’s evolved voice and its ability to unify stark contrasts in arrangement.

Themes

Critic's Take

Emma Ruth Rundle’s These Killing Times feels like a careful expansion of her world, where the best songs - “Powerless”, “Human Kindness” and “Catherine Wheel” - balance raw intimacy with swollen, tense textures. The review voice relishes the record’s ability to marry fragility and authority, noting that “Powerless” establishes tension immediately and a soaring chorus that marks it as a standout. “Human Kindness” is described as quietly devastating across its eight minutes, finding beauty in compassion, while “Catherine Wheel” twists into claustrophobic fury that echoes the album’s political unease. Ultimately the critic frames these tracks as proof that Rundle is at her peak, accepting darkness rather than dissolving it.

Key Points

• “Powerless” is best for establishing the album’s tense dynamics and a soaring, memorable chorus.
• The album’s core strength is its emotional continuity and textured heaviness that balances fragility with authority.

Themes

Critic's Take

Emma Ruth Rundle returns on These Killing Times with songs that feel like recovery and renewal, the writing clear-eyed about the widescreen horrorshow of the world. The review lingers on “God's Picture”, where a delicate hush builds to a rousing conclusion, and contrasts the doomy density of “Human Kindness” with the graceful shimmer of “Oceans of Time”. Recorded as a trio with guest textures, the album’s varied textures are presented as both strength and moral reckoning. This makes the best songs on These Killing Times feel alive and urgent rather than merely pretty.

Key Points

• The best song, “God's Picture”, is best because it builds from hush to a rousing conclusion showcasing the album's emotional arc.
• The album’s core strengths are its varied textures and clear-sighted lyrics confronting modern dread while suggesting renewal.

Themes

Critic's Take

Across These Killing Times Colin Joyce hears Emma Ruth Rundle trading solitary ruin for a roughhewn communal surge, highlighting the best songs as moments where collaboration unlocks unexpected vitality. He singles out “Enough” for its creeping opening and triumphant sludge-metal payoff, and names “Human Kindness” as a fuzzed-out dirge that nevertheless "vibrates with life" because of towering harmonies and strings. Joyce frames opener “Powerless” as a mission statement, noting its image of destruction and making - language that helps explain why these are the best tracks on These Killing Times.

Key Points

• The best song, "Human Kindness," transforms dirge into vitality through harmonies and strings.
• The album’s core strength is turning solitary despair into communal momentum and a sense of possible redemption.

Themes

Critic's Take

Emma Ruth Rundle's These Killing Times wears its political and ecological anxieties plainly, and the best tracks on the album are the ones that pair that urgency with muscular dynamics. The expansive “Anvil” and the stirring closing pair “Human Kindness” and “Oceans of Time” turn dread into something like a call to arms, which makes them the standout moments on the record. Matt Young's appraisal is measured but admiring, noting that the record is sometimes more accomplished than revelatory.

Key Points

• “Powerless” is the best song because its stark quiet-loud dynamics and two-word chorus concentrate the album's anger and vulnerability.
• The album’s core strengths are its political urgency, carefully arranged vocals, and the tension between vulnerability and volume.

Themes

Critic's Take

Emma Ruth Rundle’s These Killing Times is a welcome return, even if it struggles to reach the highs of her past. The best songs on These Killing Times are perhaps its singles: “Powerless” is an instant reminder of Emma doing what she does best, powerful, emotionally charged music that speaks to you on a deeper level. “Catherine Wheel” is a straight up classic grunge banger, while “Enough” is a huge standout, its strong acoustic leads culminating in a powerful electric burst. “God’s Picture” is a grower, but the album is very uneven and sorely missing some of the raw power and intensity she’s delivered time and time again.

Key Points

• “Enough” is the biggest standout, its strong acoustic leads culminating in a powerful electric burst.
• The album has strong grungy rock songs, but the reviewer finds it uneven and missing some of Rundle’s characteristic raw power and intensity.

Themes

Critic's Take

Emma Ruth Rundle's These Killing Times feels like an urgent, communal response to collapse, and the best tracks - “Powerless”, “Human Kindness” and “God's Picture” - show that shift most clearly. The reviewer's voice dwells on stormy dynamics and tender surprises, noting how “Powerless” erupts from piano into grunge-inflected catharsis while “Human Kindness” becomes the album's sprawling, dark centre. In between, “God's Picture” offers a hushed, mournful prayer that expands into something larger, the saxophone lending a strange beauty. The record's strength, the reviewer argues, is not abandoning darkness but changing how it responds to it, with communal arrangements that fortify the songs rather than dilute their intensity.

Key Points

• The best song, "Human Kindness", is the album's sprawling centrepiece that most clearly crystallises its emotional and musical stakes.
• The album's core strengths are its dark, communal arrangements and Rundle's ability to turn vulnerability into powerful, collective expression.

Themes