The image that Chelsea Wolfe projects dovetails with the general aesthetic put forth by her label, Pendu NYC. Granted, it'd take the tinniest of ears to conflate Wolfe's music with the witch-house stylings of Mater Suspiria Vision or White Ring. Also, while her music is caustic and challenging in its own way, the semi-industrial loop-heavy aTelecine runs laps around Wolfe in that department. Still, the image of her on the cover of Apokalypsis with whited-out eyes, coupled with her fondness for gothic and Greek typefaces, and choice of cover material (particularly her take on Burzum's "Black Spell of Destruction"), makes her a perfect fit for Pendu's combination of high art/fashion/horror/goth signifiers (particularly of an early-to-mid-1970s, European vintage). The first track on Apokalypsis ("Primal/Carnal") is a near-perfect apotheosis of this entire ideal, as Wolfe-- underneath a layer of static and fuzz that ages the clip by a good 20 years-- growls and gurgles like a woman literally possessed. Once you move past this horrific introduction, though, Apokalypsis turns out to be a kind of book completely different from what its cover promises.
The title of the album refers to the Greek root of the world "apocalypse," the root meaning "lifting of the veil." Folks not enamored with the way Apokalypsis was recorded-- an improvement only when compared to Wolfe's first album, The Grime and the Glow-- might feel like the "lo-fi" vibe on some of these tracks is one veil too many, but that choice helps as much as it hinders. On "Mer", the first proper song on the album, the hazy film lends Wolfe's halting, fragmented thoughts an air of expectant mystery that's bolstered by the song's pensive rhythm. That veneer of mystery is less beneficial on "Demons", a straightforward track that's as close to actually sounding like a Sister-era Sonic Youth outtake as anything made in the 21st century. Wolfe's uncanny mimicry of things musically goth-like doesn't end there. She's able to approximate the general pallor and stuttering sample-based rhythms of Dummy-era Portishead (on "Movie Screen"), makes like a superfan of Zola Jesus' The Spoils (on "The Wasteland"), apes early PJ Harvey (on the fittingly titled "Moses"), and even recalls the icy allure and off-kilter harmonies of the Knife (on "Friedrichshain"). It speaks favorably to Wolfe's abilities that she's able to approximate all these different styles successfully, but these tracks don't say much about who Wolfe actually is.
The aforementioned "Mer" might take its cues from performers like Harvey or other like-minded singer/songwriters, but those potential influences are more fully integrated with Wolfe's actual voice. The same goes for "Tracks (Tall Bodies)", a haunting ballad that features Wolfe imbuing a potentially heavy-handed line-- "We could be two straight lines/ In a crooked world"-- with enough pathos to avoid any possible pitfalls. Apokalypsis' crowning achievement, however, is the album's penultimate track, "Pale on Pale". It's a turgid and powerful, metal-like processional fronted by lilting Gregorian-type chants that eventually turn shrill and cacophonous by the time the seven-minute track reaches its conclusion. Its black-mass ambiance (coupled with its de facto coda, the ambient howl-laden "To the Forest, Towards the Sea") is the closest that Apokalypsis comes to realizing the foreboding, frightening airs that Wolfe's image and presentation promise. It's also, not coincidentally, the closest that Chelsea Wolfe comes to sounding less like something else, and more like herself.
