Apokalypsis by Chelsea Wolfe: Album Review

The goth rock, doom metal, singer-songwriter plunges into the depths of the darker unknown on her sophomore studio record. 

Chelsea Wolfe is known for her ability to bridge the gaps between different poles of musical genres: exploring gothic rock and doom metal on releases Abyss (2015) and Hiss Spun (2017) and applying a more stripped back Americana folk approach on her most recent record Birth of Violence (2019). Her second studio album, Apokalypsis (2012), was Wolfe’s first work recognized by critics, earning her a positive review in Pitchfork and thrusting her into the goth rock scene. Apokalypsis is a dark, brooding, and hauntingly beautiful record that captures Wolfe’s outstanding ability as a vocalist and songwriter. 

Apokalypsis, styled as Ἀποκάλυψις refers to the Greek word meaning “lifting of the veil”. The album cover depicts Wolfe staring up, eyes whited out in a transfixed and comatose state. When the first track on the record “Primal / Carnal” begins, listeners can only assume that what has captured Wolfe’s gaze is that of an evil nature, as the track is solely twenty-five seconds of gnawing growls and screams. 

This dark and unsettling feeling is immediately carried into the second track “Mer” as well “Tracks (Tall Bodies),” “Movie Screen” and “Pale on Pale.” However, as Wolfe revealed in an interview with Interview Magazine, this “lifting of the veil” is meant to represent positive revelations, an epiphany of sorts. Relating to the title of the record, it can be assumed that Wolfe imagines these epiphanies as those revealed at the end of times as the earth is ceasing to exist, demonstrating deeper and overwhelming truths of the universe and hence the whited out eyes.  

These revelation-bearing messages are carried out in the way Wolfe intertwines her instrumentation and vocals. Though mostly a sludge rock record, featuring down-tuned electric guitars, low-pitched and heavy drums that foster this dark and haunting energy, Wolfe experiments with different sounds here. She applies trip-hoppy, electronic style beats reminiscent of Portishead’s Dummy in “Movie Screen” and dull, scratchy electronic noises in the closer track “To The Forest, Towards the Sea.” Her voice carries an airy, echoey, and chorus-like quality that seems to float over these brooding and raging instruments. Wolfe’s voice, her greatest asset on this record, is loaded with echo, reverb, and paired with low harmonies which thus makes her lyrics quite unintelligible. While this loss of the lyrics is not usually appealing to me, it works. Wolfe does not employ her voice as merely an expressive medium of her lyrics. Rather, she uses her voice as an instrument, acting as a sweet departure from the booming instruments playing around her and expressing human emotion beyond ways that words can. The instrumentation provides a stable support for Wolfe’s ad libbing vocals, but also stands out for it’s ferocity in transmitting the record’s heaviness, both in its symbolic themes and sonic head-bangingness. 

Wolfe’s suggested positivity in revelation comes across in upbeat tracks like “Mer,” and the more classic rock inspired tune “Demons,” but also lyrically in “Friedrichshain,” in which she identifies a possible origin for her whited out eyes: “A forest of purest green I couldn't look away.” Despite this, she ultimately expresses a deep frustration with the state of the world and her experiences in it. In “Tracks (Tall Bodies)” Wolfe repeats the line “We could be two straight lines in a crooked world” over a slow, melodic guitar riff and drumbeat. In “The Wasteland,” Wolfe foretells the apocalypse, saying that “It’s gonna be a fire, It’s gonna be a heat you’ve never known.” 

Chelsea Wolfe’s goal to explore the dichotomous struggle of reaching personal epiphany in a world “devoid of reason, devoid of sense” (“Tracks (Tall Bodies)”)  may or may not have been attained in her second release, Apokalypsis. Though lacking in lyrical development, this quest for personal revelation is achieved from the instrumentation and vocal quality alone due to its dark, heavy, and borderline creepy nature. I recommend putting on a good pair of headphones, going on a long walk, and playing this album from start to finish. Epiphanies may or may not be experienced.