Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss
Critic Score
Based on 28 reviews
2015 Ratings: #203 / 1021
User Score
Based on 488 ratings
2015 Rank: #52
Liked by 68 people
Sign In to rate and review

CRITIC REVIEWS

100
Metal Injection
Even at it’s loudest it may not really be metal, but it will push more of those same buttons than you think. And you will love it.
90
Angry Metal Guy
Wolfe continues growing and evolving as an artist and her unique and highly innovative song-writing approach has hit yet another peak and yielded arguably her finest album to date.
90
Tiny Mix Tapes

Abyss neatly encompasses the totality of her career, synthesizing the artist’s prolific catalog into her strongest and most ambitious album yet, a cavernous chasm filled with beauty, brutality, and endless possibility.

85
The 405

Ultimately, Abyss is like a nightmare. It consumes you, shows you a darkness you'd tried to keep away from, but in the cold of night, wide awake and heart-pumping you can't deny you enjoy the thrill of it.

81
Pitchfork
Overall, this is the first time you feel like the music consistently lives up to the power of her voice.
80
Exclaim!

Abyss needs no visual accompaniment to conjure unshakeable images and intense sensations, so vivid are the pictures it paints with sound alone.

80
The Irish Times
Capturing the worrying split between calm and anxiety, Chelsea Wolfe displays an unerring knack for transparency and clarity.
80
The Needle Drop
Chelsea Wolfe's latest record is her most dense and brooding yet.
80
God Is in the TV
Chelsea Wolfe is still one of the most fearless and challenging musicians in the indie music scene and thankfully, for her artistic sake, she remains in the abyss of contemporary music.
80
XLR8R

In lesser hands, Abyss may have collapsed under the weight of its self-seriousness. Instead, Wolfe steps into the cavernous space of her ambition and fills it with an assured collection of songs that are unsettling in their commitment to sorrow.

80
Mojo

Abyss is a darkly compelling tour de force.

80
Uncut

Though Abyss' quieter moments are plenty chilling, Wolfe's brand of anguish best succeeds when she's out to do serious damage.

80
The Skinny

Abyss portrays a skilled songwriter at the peak of her game, capable of composing wonderfully harmonious, country-tinged laments – albeit drowning them in outlandish studio trickery and effects.

80
AllMusic

More than ever, Abyss proves that she knows when to unleash her full fury and when to rein it in, and the results are stunning.

80
musicOMH

Wolfe’s previous albums have at times been hazy, barely conscious affairs, Abyss is perhaps the first that really seeks to plunge into the depths and explore the darker edges of the subconscious.

80
Drowned in Sound

Abyss proves that there's still much work to do in the dark side of alt rock. Chelsea Wolfe is surely ahead of the curve.

75
Under the Radar

Abyss, like any Wolfe album, is a vast and immersive sonic universe, and her deepest and most personal yet.

75
Consequence of Sound

There’s a vast landscape in Abyss, but most times it’s too dark to be certain of what you see.

70
The Line of Best Fit

With Abyss Wolfe puts front and center this darkness and uses it as both a bludgeon and catalyst.

70
Rolling Stone

There's no mistaking the real hurt in these songs — throughout Abyss, Wolfe uses her pain as a powerful tool, revealing the beauty underneath it.

70
No Ripcord

Despite the weak ending, Wolfe brings a chaotic, engulfing sound that makes this one of her heaviest works yet.

70
SPIN

This time Wolfe fully embraces the eerie darkness that’s always trailed her work. Abyss weighs unnecessarily heavy at times ... but Wolfe makes a convincing case to follow her into the underworld.

70
PopMatters

Abyss may not be a go-to for either late-night or summer listening, but it ably solidifies Wolfe’s presence as a devastatingly unique voice in our current musical climate.

67
A.V. Club
The downside of all this bombast is that the album, taken as a whole, can feel ponderous.
60
Clash

When it is deprived of reverb, Wolfe's voice is as wraith-like and potent as ever and a fitting central motif to her most successful effort yet.

60
NOW Magazine
The whole albums mood is creepy and otherworldly, with the California singer/songwriter employing heavy clouds of drone, disjointed, out-of-tune piano lines and her spectral vocals to create an atmosphere of doom.
60
Crack Magazine

The most apparent shift here is in production values: Abyss feels fuller, crisper, far less experimental than previous work, revolving around a more traditional doom/industrial palette.

60
FLOOD Magazine
Her fifth album, the confessionally titled “Abyss,” is a dark dive into a deep chasm of negation and dread.
WhatTheFunk
69

No, this album has nothing to do with the Cameron movie released in '89, even if the cover could pretend the opposite. A glaucous version perhaps, without a diving suit, in which you visit the seabed with your feet moulded in a slab of concrete.

From the first creepy beats of "Carrion Flowers", you know that this Chelsea Wolfe album will be very dark. Oppressive, the darkness of the sounds contrasts with the clear voice of the young woman, hypnotic guitars are ubiquitous, cavernous ... read more

FACEMOVIES
95

Are you afraid of the dark? What if we made the day to the night? Imagine no one is sleeping at night, the birds are singing in the night, you hear cars driving, people going to work or to the park in the night. You hear children playing on the streets, the ringing bell of bicycles and the wind. Its dark, but if you close your eyes and just listen, it feels like a normal sunny day. Imagine this being the normal day routine in this world. People sleep in daylight but live their life at night. ... read more

depechemode4lif
94

Now that is a perfect title for this album. God I loved Pain is Beauty but this is next level. The industrial and doom mrtal infused with her ethereal darkwave makes for one of the most apocolypric yet disturbingly beautiful pieces of music of the 2010s.

pearathon
81

Was hoping to like this one a little more considering it is (tied for) her highest rated, but this isn't my favorite project from her so far. Now granted, it is still quite good, but some aspects of it do leave me slightly preferring records like Hiss Spun as well as her newest one. There are lots of great moments here, the first two tracks are especially amazing with the crushing industrial sound all throughout, but I think the slowness and broodiness of most this album does get a little much ... read more

Movie_Rose
97

This was just a tad better than "Pain is Beauty." Her captivating vocals compared to the instrumentals make this album a must listen to anyone imo.

CrocodileDippy
91

Here we have the first Chelsea Wolfe album I ever listened to, 'Abyss' takes her signature brooding sound in an even darker and more aggressive direction with a more abrasive rock sound bordering on metal at times. It calls back to the noise rock of her earlier material, but now with more ambiance and direction almost granting it the feel of a concept album exploring the dark depths of the human psyche that we wish to hide away from. It's a bit much, to say the least, tho not quite as heavy as ... read more

Purchasing Abyss from Amazon helps support Album of the Year. Or consider a donation?
Become a Donor
Donor badge, no ads + more benefits.
Advertisement

Track List

1Carrion Flowers
4:50
93
2Iron Moon
5:46
91
3Dragged Out
4:20
89
4Maw
5:54
86
5Grey Days
5:19
85
6After the Fall
5:35
89
7Crazy Love
3:33
76
8Simple Death
5:22
78
9Survive
5:38
82
10Color of Blood
4:48
80
11The Abyss
4:12
84
Total Length: 55 minutes
Comments (3)
Sign in to comment
1w
1w
4mo


Added on: April 28, 2015