Hiss Spun, Wolfe’s fifth studio album, continues to aggressively pursue metal and industrial music, and it makes for an enrapturing listen all the way through. Hiss Spun by CHELSEA WOLFE Hiss Spun by CHELSEA WOLFE Around this time, Wolfe’s music began getting a bit heavier - and it later grew heavier still with 2015’s Abyss - adding a few electronic accents and industrial beats that made the album as convincing as it was lofty and melodramatic. 2013’s Pain Is Beauty, in particular, was a leap forward for her career, sacrificing nothing in imposing doom while sinking yet deeper into nuanced songcraft. It was a solid listen, but it seemed hard to imagine Wolfe still making compelling music in, say, 2017.įast forward to the present, though, and it turns out Wolfe has only gotten better with time. The album cover itself, depicting Wolfe in pupil-less rapture, neatly summed up a concern that perhaps her music was a little too forced, a little too willing to embrace cheesy occult darkness for its own sake, as though darkness were its very own genre. Still, while Apokalypsis offered plenty in the way of dark, densely atmospheric songs, it was hard to dismiss a nagging skepticism about the substance of the project.

Though Wolfe then operated more in the realm of doom-folk than the electropop acts at the forefront of this early 2010s trend, her music nonetheless suggested some tantalizing possibilities. At the time, I was consumed by what I saw as something of a goth-pop renaissance in indie music, represented by the cloaked likes of TR/ST, Austra, Zola Jesus, and Cold Cave.

I first encountered Chelsea Wolfe through 2011’s Apokalypsis.

Chelsea wolfe hiss spun