Chelsea Wolfe

“Northern California native Chelsea Wolfe’s sound is best described with broad strokes: elemental, intense, radiant, ancient yet modern, intimate yet expansive, dark and sparkling. Hues of black metal and deep blues inform her ever-evolving electric folk—a warm force that wraps itself around the listener, encouraging uplift, seeking triumph. Her voice similarly haunts and soothes, with words that illuminate life’s darker corners in order to reveal the unlikely truth and beauty hidden within.”

-chelseawolfe.net

No matter how amazing Chelsea Wolfe is, that first album “The Grime and the Glow” hit the snooze button on the brain and even though beautifully melodic you could literally just sleep through it But with her release of album Apokalypsis”, released in August of 2011 struck me like a big yellow school bus.  The first track  “Primal//Carnal” kicks off the album with 24 seconds of noise and screams that reassembles the sounds of a possessed woman.  There is something otherworldly, spiritual and haunting about this album and about Chelsea Wolfe per se. This album approaches its so called darkness being influenced by sounds of  Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey, a little Nick Cave and Portishead, still flirting with a little doom metal and ambient. The simple foundations of guitar, drums, piano and Chelsea’s angelic eerie vocals submerges you into a spiral to the 7th pit of hell, but in the most beautiful way. 

Her new album, “Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs”, released on October of this year was Chelsea’s attempt to connect with  her folk roots. Allowing a few rays of light in, unlike in her previous album “Apokalypsis”, Chelsea’s whisper like voice and high notes make this album seems as if it was soaked in fragility and vulnerability, almost like a lullaby.