Album Graveyard: Rune - The End Of Nothing

I’d love to title this article a “Modern Classic”, unfortunately, Rune is probably not popular enough, perhaps not influential enough, and simply just too strange for most people to get.

The description of sound fits somewhere between the genre created by Neurosis, death metal and grind, and gloomy doom. Truly though, Rune is more than the sum of it’s parts, because while a person could point out certain pieces that fit with those genres, Rune is a truly unique creation.

One could interpret the sudden tempo changes as grind. You could say the often slow tempos and generally despondent feeling are related to doom. The inclusion of samples at points could an influence from Neurosis. The strange, garbled, extremely rough, yet harmonized vocals by the two vocalists in Rune at first actually reminded me of the same way Cradle Of Filth does their rough vocal harmonies. Overall though, the description of their sound in this review doesn’t do them justice.

“The End Of Nothing” was the first full length, and last release for the band. Previously they had created a self titled EP in 2000, and a split with Kalibas in 2003. After the breakup of Rune, Willowtip Records re-released “The End Of Nothing” with several bonus tracks. There’s also been an internet rumour of Rune doing a split with F*ck The Facts, but this has been disputed by F*ck The Facts.

Rune of course fell victim to the early incarnation of Willowtip Records who’s roster in the earlier days had very few bands that were very strange, and would break up. The “Willowtip Breakup Curse” situation seemed to have been remedied by signing a lot more less-strange grind bands.

The members of Rune split off to the extremely well received Mouth Of The Architect coming from the Neurosis school of music. Instrumental band Kenoma (who Mouth Of The Architect did a split with) also contains members of Rune. The doom band Ultralord also contained a Rune member at a point in time. As good as all those bands have purported to be, none have come close to the originality of Rune.

9/10

Willowtip Records

PS if you look at the download section of Willowtip Records, you can find mp3s of the Rune songs “Babylon Burning” and “Opium Of My Soul” both taken from “The End Of Nothing”.