The dark (Chelsea Wolfe)
The high priestess of gothic rock returns with The Dark, her ninth album (yes, already!), a journey of introspection that glides through the shadows until it reaches the darkest part of her being for a final confrontation, which serves as a first step toward a form of liberation.
Constantly using the second-person “you”, which seems to refer both to the Other (human or divine) and to herself in an initial distancing (“Cold”), the artist, a stranger to herself (“This stranger I become now”), begins her journey to understand herself and find her place, or even a way out of this world, and “Seethe” embodies, in this sense (the music video is representative), a growing sense of impatience, an inner turmoil that leaves her restless and calls her to take action. Both her voice and the orchestrations grow harsher.
The artist ventures into the deepest recesses of her being, on a journey of introspection, into the heart of the most complete solitude, the sister of darkness, both resembling one another, coming together in absence. She tightens the bonds of her solitude only to emerge all the more free (“I’m gonna get free / of the lonely,” she declares in “Humours”). Here, the expression of a darkness that swallows anyone who enters it takes on its full meaning (“I had to learn how not to breathe”), on the track “Swallower,” which distills a powerful, raw rock sound. We experience this journey with Chelsea. “Halo,” with its haunting, heavy rhythm, creates an atmosphere that is truly suffocating (“Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide”), where the lyrics fold back in on themselves.
Complete darkness, then this question, like a light still flickering: “Can you sing the truth of love or understand a broken heart?”, pointing to love and understanding the heart as the only escape from this world, described as so inhuman that even the light of his love returns to him (“The dark”). The further one progresses through this album, in a sense, blindly, the heavier and more jarring the atmosphere becomes. One must accept change for “you”, that is, the other (always human or divine) and oneself at the same time, by looking them in the eye. This is what “Turn the Key” evokes with its grunge-tinged sound, developing the theme of self-erasure (“I erased myself”) and that first new encounter with oneself and the world after that erasure (just as darkness erases light, and night erases day), a sort of reset, a fresh start to (re)learn how to see.
“I'm not there” (which completes the erasure through absence) follows with its almost pop-like folk sound, where Chelsea’s fragile voice takes on an intimate quality, delivering an irrevocable observation (“It’s too late, we’re already strangers”), that of a separation that speaks volumes: personal fragmentation, distancing from the Other, and a symbol of the original fall. Yet “Death is not the end,” which ventures into industrial territory with explosive vocals and a visual aesthetic of ebb and flow, carries the listener toward a form of death to the world, all the way to the final, fragile “Dancer in the Sky”, bathed in chiaroscuro, where suddenly one symbolically regains one’s sight (“Come find me / You know where I hide (...) I see you now”), we open our eyes again and let a little light in (inner? spiritual? everyone will interpret it as they wish), like a reconciliation in the light, emerging from the darkness that gives this dark and powerfully evocative album its title.
This is a truly beautiful journey, magnificently carried by the guitars of Robin Finck (Nine Inch Nails) and Troy Van Leeuwen (Queens of the Stone Age) and brought to life by the masterful production of Jennifer Decilveo (Bat for Lashes, Andra Day, and others). On this album, Chelsea Wolfe confronts, perhaps more than ever before, her demons, her doubts, fears, suffering, and loneliness, all gathered beneath the vast veil of darkness, total, yet not definitive. Are you ready to follow in her footsteps?
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