Chelsea Wolfe is a musician who metal fans go to when they need something mellow but capable of raising goosebumps. Her reputation extends well beyond the alternative rock world. She flirts with doom metal, cites black metal as an influence, and navigates through minimalist rock music with dark electronic embellishments and distortion. Album number eight follows 2024’s acclaimed electronica affair, She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She (yes, that’s the title of it). As a more stripped-back affair with a piping of gas in its foundations, The Dark will have no trouble growing its fanbase and satisfying the obsessives.
A simple vocal melody dominates the strummed guitar of opening song, ‘Cold’, and it’s something you’ll grow used to throughout this record. Here, Wolfe uses the minimalist textures to emphasise the power of her voice and words, switching between yearning and bellowing in an expressive soprano range. The gradual introduction of drums and piano chords turns this into a drama to match the message of recovery from severed human relationships. You can feel the delicacy of the words like snowflakes melting on the tip of your tongue. “I’m letting you go; I’m letting you win / I need to know who I am without you,” is a sentiment many of us know too well.
Fans of her earlier work will appreciate the tension created by the busy bass picking in follow-up track, ‘Seethe’. It might remind you of the way Filter mastermind, Richard Patrick, turned his U2 influences into a darker gothic rock tone in the 1990s. Of course, there is no comparison here with Bono and co. Wolfe operates in the same snow-covered desolation as Tori Amos. It’s a place where beauty exists, but it comes at a price to those who disturb nature. Likewise, the percussive rhythms in ‘Humours’ flutter like butterflies with their wings clipped. Listeners should find the subtle layers of electric guitar as fascinating as the vocals.
Inevitably, the production keeps Wolfe’s voice centre stage, and so it should do. She explores the cracks at the edge of her falsetto with striking results in ‘Swallower’, which leaves you unprepared for the upbeat sadness of ‘Halo’. The talent here is how she enshrouds her lyrics in a musical minimalism like Nirvana’s famous execution of this style in their legendary song, ‘Something in the Way’. There’s no option for you to tune out when you’re hooked into this track. To do so would be as insensitive as stamping on a child’s sandcastle. The squeep of her sliding fingers in ‘Death Is Not the End’ has the same effect as her voice follows the guitar chords, yet there’s a big difference here. This song threatens to fall into a doom metal swamp of leeches when the bass frequencies flood through the mix in the last third.
Musically, The Dark is not just acoustic chords and simple 4/4 drumbeats in a supporting role to the charismatic voice. The title track showcases a fast finger-picking style worthy of the folk genre, to which Wolfe does not belong. Every rock fan who wonders what Tori Amos would sound like with grungy guitars can ponder over ‘Turn the Key’ to see if the outcome is what they imagined. The atmospherics come from Wolfe’s pipes here rather than any elaborate keyboards or samples. Echo effects resonate like voices begging to be released from limbo.
“I’m trapped by all these walls we’ve built / I’m trapped by all this shame and guilt,” laments Wolfe in ‘I’m Not There’. The paradox is the confident fragility of her voice. It’s a deliberate singing style that works. Observe how she turns the key words into a falsetto for the chorus and then lingers on them. The surprises are not boundless, but they’re not lacking either. At times, ‘Dancer in the Sky’ seems to hint at a pizzicato violin, although that impression may exist only in this reviewer’s imagination.
It seems The Dark is a complicated place beneath the surface.
Kirk Houghton
Verdict
Release Date: 21/08/2026
Record Label: Loma Vista Recordings, A Concord Label Group Release
Standout tracks: Seethe; Swallower; Death Is Not the End
Suggested Further Listening: Tori Amos – Under the Pink (1994), Oceans of Slumber – Starlight and Ash (2022), GGGOLDDD – This Shame Should Not Be Mine (2022)