Abyss

Abyss is the only record in this index that is about what happens to you in bed, and the production is the argument.

Wolfe had made folk records, drone records and a record with a black metal shadow over it, and Abyss is where she stopped choosing. Congleton's production puts doom-metal guitar, industrial percussion, viola and a singer-songwriter's vocal in the same space and refuses to balance them: the guitars are enormous and slightly blown out, the drums are mechanical and too loud, and Wolfe's voice spends most of the album underneath all of it — audible, melodic, and smothered. Then, two or three times across the record, everything drops away and she is simply there, in close, unaccompanied.

That alternation is the whole record and it is a direct transcription of its subject. Wolfe has spoken at length about living with sleep paralysis and with vivid lucid dreaming, about keeping a recorder by the bed, and about writing from the state where you are conscious, aware of the room, and unable to move or speak. Abyss sounds like that: weight on top of you, your own voice too far away to use, and then abrupt, total clarity.

The heavy material

"Carrion Flowers" opens the record with a mechanical loop that sounds like industrial plant and is the most aggressive thing she has recorded. "Iron Moon" and "Dragged Out" are the doom-facing tracks. "Maw" and "Color of Blood" are where the guitars and the viola — Ezra Buchla's playing is one of the record's best features — are most effective together.

The quiet material

"Crazy Love" is almost solo and is the best piece of songwriting on the album, and its placement in the middle of the heaviest stretch is the sequencing decision that makes the record work. "After the Fall" and "Grey Days" are the other breaths.

Where it is less successful

The middle sags and three or four tracks use the same dynamic shape. Congleton's low end is so compressed that on some systems the record simply sounds muddy. And Wolfe's lyrics, which are deliberately impressionistic, give a listener less to hold than her delivery promises.

For the record that does this to memory rather than to sleep, Everywhere at the End of Time; for the same voice-under-mass production, Deathconsciousness; for the same bodily acoustic dread, Hereditary (OST).

The short answer: the album ends with its title track, and the title track is the quietest thing on it. After forty minutes of compressed guitar, mechanical percussion and a buried vocal, "The Abyss" strips almost all of it away — a slow, spare arrangement with Wolfe's voice fully forward for the first time since the opening seconds of the record. It does not resolve anything. It is not a release in the way the closer of Deathconsciousness is. What it does is remove the weight and leave the subject: the thing the record has been describing was always the person underneath the noise, and the last track is what she sounds like with the noise taken off. The album's shape is therefore an uncovering rather than an escalation, which is the opposite of how records in this register usually end.

What does sleep paralysis have to do with Abyss?

It is the record's subject and its structure. Wolfe has spoken about experiencing sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming, about the sensation of being awake, aware of the room, and unable to move or make a sound, and about keeping a recorder beside the bed to capture what she had in that state. The production's alternation — crushing weight with the vocal buried, then sudden unaccompanied clarity — is a direct transcription of that experience rather than a description of it.

Who produced Abyss?

John Congleton, who had worked with St Vincent, Swans, Explosions in the Sky and a long list of others. His contribution is the record's defining quality and its most divisive one: a deliberately unbalanced mix in which the guitars and drums are allowed to overwhelm the vocal, with very heavy compression on the low end. Listeners who find the record muddy are hearing the production doing exactly what it was asked to.

Is Abyss a metal album?

Not quite, and it is not quite anything else either. There is doom metal guitar, industrial percussion, gothic folk, drone and singer-songwriter writing on it, often in the same track. Wolfe's catalogue runs from acoustic folk to Hiss Spun's heavier register, and Abyss is the pivot point. It is usually filed as doom or gothic rock and neither is adequate.

Where should I start with Chelsea Wolfe?

With "Carrion Flowers" and "Crazy Love" from this record, which between them describe her whole range. Abyss is the best entry point to the heavy material; Apokalypsis is the earlier, rawer record; Pain Is Beauty is the most accessible; and Hiss Spun is where the metal side goes furthest. If you want the folk, the Unknown Rooms collection is the one.

Is Abyss frightening?

Oppressive rather than frightening, and specifically physical. We score it 078 on reality anchor and 012 on tone: there is nothing supernatural in it and nothing consoling either, and the dread is the sensation of weight and of not being able to make yourself heard. It is the most intimate record in this medium in our index.

Scored against the published rubric, here is what the numbers mean.

Reality anchor 078 is high — only 18 works score higher. The record's subject is a state in which perception is unreliable, and the production never gives a listener a stable balance to orient against.

Tone 012 is bleak — 22 works score lower. There is no resolution anywhere on it, and the closest thing to relief is the weight being removed rather than anything arriving.

Era bias 086 reads modern — 87 works score lower. 2015, digital production, heavy compression and a mix that depends on modern control over level.

Viscera 030 is low — 30 works score lower. Nothing is described, though the record's imagery is bodily and the low end is physical.

The threat at 040 is on the supernatural side — 54 works score lower, which is a judgement call: nothing in the record is supernatural, and the thing it describes is not a person either.

Pace 022 is very slow — 25 works are slower. The tempos are doom tempos throughout and nothing on the album hurries.

On shocks: two or three, and all of them are the arrangement dropping out rather than arriving.