Last year, the dark and metal-adjacent Louisville singer-songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle teamed up with Louisiana sludge titans Thou to release the collaborative album May Our Chambers Be Full, and it ruled so hard. Thus far in 2021, Rundle and Thou released the follow-up EP The Helm Of Sorrow, and Rundle also collaborated with Chelsea Wolfe on the single “Anhedonia.” But now, Rundle is getting back to making music on her own. She’s just announced that she’ll release a new album called Engine Of Hell this fall. The image above — a photo taken by Deafheaven’s George Clarke — is the album’s cover art.

Rundle has just shared “Return,” the opening track and lead single from Engine Of Hell. It’s a stark, slow, hypnotic song, with just Rundle’s voice over an elegant piano figure. On the song Rundle is in a mythic Nick Cave zone, singing a hound of hell and a demimonde astride the crossing. Rundle directed her own “Return” video, and she stars as both a white-clad Angel and a corpse-painted embodiment of Death. Here’s what Rundle says about it:

An examination of the existential. A fractured poem. Trying to quantify what something is definitely about or pontificating on its concrete meaning defeats the purpose of art making. I’m not a writer. I make music and images to express things that my words cannot convey or emote. I’ve been studying ballet and the practice of expression through movement, which I incorporated into the video. I choreographed a dance to the song — some of which you see. Pieces show through. Since completing Engine Of Hell, I’ve stepped away from music more and more and into things like dance, painting and working on ideas for videos or little films. “Return” is the result of the efforts

Below, watch the “Return” video and check out the Engine Of Hell tracklist.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Return”
02 “Blooms Of Oblivion”
03 “Body”
04 “The Company”
05 “Dancing Man”
06 “Razor’s Edge”
07 “Citadel”
08 “In My Afterlife”

Engine Of Hell is out 11/5 on Sargent House; pre-order it here.