Rating: 8.8

Country: USA

Release Date: 2003

Record Label: Willowtip

Track list:
1. An Affinity
2. Opium For My Soul
3. Babylon Burning [MP3]
4. Worthless Endeavor
5. This Sorrow
6. Wilt
7. Leaving Form
8. Ethereal Bleeding

Total playing time: 46:36

Rune - The End of Nothing

Kevin Gamble - Guitar
Jeremy Jordan - Vocals
Jimmy Magnuson - Drums
Dave Mann - Bass
Rick Shutte - Guitar

It's difficult [okay, impossible] to gauge just how much of an impact a band will have on the music world after just one release, especially in this day and age, when there are so many bands in so many subgenres claiming to play 'metal'. Never again will there be another band like King Crimson or Black Sabbath, which absolutely knocks you dead with their debut to the point that you can say immediately, "This is a band that will definitely leave its mark." However, every so often a band come around that shows enough promise to make people want them to leave their mark on the 'scene' and make its peers re-evaluate their own work with a more scrupulous eye. Dayton, Ohio 's Rune is one such band.

With the gradual decay of the death metal scene into endemic artistic malaise over the past six or seven years [there being only a handful of bands to have done anything truly phenomenal, and almost all of those having been around since the genre's golden age of 1989-1993] it would almost seem like Rune has no right to be this good. But the fact is that this sextet, which was first heard from by virtue of a split with now-defunct Rochester, NY grind monster Kalibas on Relapse Records, takes its cues from all the right places. And unlike most other latecomer death metal bands, which merely take cues without leaving any of their own, Rune resonates with a certain je-ne-sais-quoi that makes it very much its own band. The core sound of Rune is best described as technically advanced and heavily layered death metal that uses inventive minor-key harmonics and dissonance to great effect; most of these songs also contain more than a subtle trace of doom influence, with most songs featuring drawn-out, dirge-like melodies, broken up by barrages of chaotic tech-death, and occasional string synths and electronic noise passages. If one were forced to pinpoint bands to cite as touchstones for accurately describing Rune's sound, latterday Gorguts, Immolation, Cattlepress and Godflesh would all come to mind, but such comparisons don't tell the whole story.

Though their songwriting hasn't quite reached the level where they can be considered among the death metal 'A'-list at this point [mainly due to some of the faster parts having a bit of a 'red-lining while stuck in mud' feel to them], Rune does have one very large advantage over the vast majority of their contemporaries, and that is their ability to differentiate their compositions from one-another. Though all the songs on 'The End of Nothing' contain multiple fast and slow passages, they're all differently constructed and each have their own very distinctive 'hook' riff that effectively creates an illusion of accessibility that belies the dense, challenging nature of the music as a whole. Rest assured, this is not a record that can all be absorbed in one or two listens - there are enough unpredictable time signature shifts and quirky guitar flourishes [these guys bend and pinch notes like it's second nature to them] here to rival Gorguts, Cryptopsy and Necrophagist at their most cruelly abstruse. But unlike so many other 'technical' death metal releases, Rune's debut is artful and emotionally evocative enough to ultimately be a satisfying listen, as well as deep enough to have high replay value.

'The End of Nothing' is a remarkably ambitious first [and last] album and is sure to impress those who are sick of the same ol' same-ol' blast-blast-blast death metal.

April 30th, 2005