What are we doing reviewing Chelsea Wolfe, you ask?
Well, at some point in my life as an extreme music fan, I realized that it was the “heavy” I was attracted to just as much as the “metal.” I discovered a spirit, which, while definitely present in many forms of metal, did not exist in all of them. It’s something otherworldly, a seeking spirit straining to break into the beyond, into the depths of the human spirit. Sick of plastic poster board Norse deities and satanic downfalls, I’ve been seeking this spirit ever since, often finding it in strange places.
Chelsea Wolfe has been on a lot of metal fans’ radars for this very same reason. While her droning, ghost-eyed and occasionally blackened (in the loosest sense) neo-folk could rarely be called “metal” it’s heavy as hell in spirit, with a natural sense of fraught, dark melody that resonates deeply with the jaded 21st century metal head. You know how some of the best horror movie moments are silent? That’s what Chelsea Wolfe has going on.
For her fourth proper album, Abyss, Wolfe hinted at first that she’d finally taken the plunge and done a full-on “metal” album. She released the singles “Iron Moon,” a wonderfully strange but familiar take on the female-fronted doom of Windhand or King Woman, and the unholy marriage of Godflesh and Nightwish that is “Carrion Flowers.”
Anyone expecting a complete transformation might be a little disappointed at first. Plenty of tracks like “Grey Days,” “Crazy Love,” and “Simple Death” will be familiar to anyone who enjoyed the quieter, lighter darkness of Pain Is Beauty. What’s new though is Wolfe’s newfound love of distortion, both in volume and the album’s most basic atmosphere and composition.
The moments when she truly rages, like on “Dragged Out” and the later half of “After the Fall,” feel like a wonderful and natural extension of her core sound, but even at its quietest moments, Abyss still carries a growing horror in its belly. The razor wire melodies of “Survive” lick at the ear like a cold apparition flickering in the corner of the eye, and the twinkling, off-key piano on the title track will have you looking over your shoulder for undead, knife-wielding toddlers.
It would have been very easy for Chelsea Wolfe to just make a knockoff doom album. It also would have been pretty boring. Her spirit is too vast and her sound too multi-faceted to be contained in such a limited canvas. What she’s done is craft a vessel capable of containing many different shades of darkness. Even at it’s loudest it may not really be metal, but it will push more of those same buttons than you think. And you will love it.
10/10
