Chelsea Wolfe has put out the last single from her upcoming album Hiss Spun out on September 22 via Sargent House, and with it would have put to rest any doubt about the stellar magnitude of this upcoming work if there was any. Three other pulverizing singles led up to this six minute opus that is potentially the heart of the album, the latter of which Wolfe expanded on in a previous statement: “I wanted to write some sort of escapist music...You’re just bombarded with constant bad news, people getting fucked over and killed for shitty reasons or for no reason at all, and it seems like the world has been in tears for months, and then you remember it’s been fucked for a long time, it’s been fucked since the beginning. It’s overwhelming and I have to write about it.” About "The Culling", she further explains, "I'm at odds with myself, exploring different characters, comparing war stories...desperation, withdrawal, clarity, disgust, grief."
In the teasingly soft build-up, Wolfe's darkly angelic vocals are at their height, literally too. Weirdly enough the highest notes almost remind me of FKA Twigs, but with the leaden two-note guitar line gnarling below, there's no confusing the two. As another silvery sustained guitar is added to the mix, an array of suspended notes begins to coalesce on top of a delectably dirty bass line and build towards an exquisitely satisfying drop. Here it all plunges into transcendent chaos and Wolfe sounds like she's bellowing from an underground cave amidst a tornado of sparkling black noise. After your chest has exploded, she lulls you back into a calmer state by repeating the words flux ("movement, flow"), hiss ("positive life force"), welt ("brutality of life"), and groan ("sensuality, death") until the song ends. September 22 is just around the corner, but it feels so far away.
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