On {|Hiss Spun|}, {|Chelsea Wolfe|} goes even deeper, darker, and heavier with her music than she did on {|Abyss|}. To help her reach these depths, she assembled a murderer's row of metal talent: In addition to longtime collaborator {|Ben Chisholm|} ... Read more

On {|Hiss Spun|}, {|Chelsea Wolfe|} goes even deeper, darker, and heavier with her music than she did on {|Abyss|}. To help her reach these depths, she assembled a murderer's row of metal talent: In addition to longtime collaborator {|Ben Chisholm|} and drummer {|Jess Gowrie|}, with whom she'd been in a band years before, she recruited {|Converge|}'s {|Kurt Ballou|}, {|Queens of the Stone Age|}'s {|Troy Van Leeuwen|}, and {|Aaron Turner|} of {|Isis|}, {|Sumac|}, and {|Old Man Gloom|}. Somehow, the heavier {|Wolfe|}'s music gets, the more eloquence and nuance she finds in its sheer volume. She wastes no time introducing {|Hiss Spun|}'s crushing weight with Spun, which sounds exactly like the heavy love she sings about. It's equally glorious and ominous, with something erotic and all-consuming in its slowly swaying beat, beautifully sinister guitars, and {|Wolfe|}'s weightless soprano floating above it all. Though she shares the spotlight gracefully -- {|Van Leeuwen|}'s guitar work makes each of the album's first three songs a standout, while {|Turner|}'s growls add an extra doomy authenticity to Vex -- as on {|Abyss|}, it's clear that {|Hiss Spun|} is metal done her way. {|Wolfe|} incorporates a relentless electronic pulse into the climate change lament Offering, and strips things down to little more than piano and her voice on Welt. {|Ballou|}'s production leaves space for the full range of her unearthly vocals, allowing her to reach epic highs and lows on songs such as The Culling and Twin Fawn, both of which offer some of the album's most tender moments before unleashing their dark majesty. The span of {|Hiss Spun|}'s sounds matches the ways {|Wolfe|} poetically expresses love, betrayal, strength, and decay in personal and global terms. She depicts a world hell-bent on destroying itself on Particle Flux and Static Hum, surrounding her imagery of war's victims and a planet on fire with suffocating white noise. Though the stories on songs like Two Spirit are smaller, the stakes are just as high, and when {|Wolfe|} sings my regret will never consume me on the apocalyptic finale Scrape, it can't help but feel like a victory. Both fierce and fragile, {|Hiss Spun|} presents an artist in compelling control of the entire scope of her expression. ~ Heather Phares Less