Chelsea Wolfe strips back on "The Mother Road," the lead single from her upcoming Birth Of Violence
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Photo: John Crawford
There’s always been an ominous bombast to the work of gothic songwriter Chelsea Wolfe, one that’s grown darker and more dire on recent albums like 2015's Abyss and 2017's Hiss Spun, which we called a “full-on sludge-metal extravaganza.” Consider it some kind of reprieve, then, that the doom singer’s latest, Birth Of Violence, serves as “a return to the reclusive nature of her earlier recordings,” its intimate, folk-leaning tracks highlighting Wolfe’s vocals and acoustic guitar.
That said, a storm’s still brewing on lead single “The Mother Road,” which finds Wolfe’s emphatic strums and evocative lyrics—“Building a broken but precious web/like a spider in Chernobyl”—swallowed in wailing spurts of black smoke.