Chelsea Wolfe – Live Review – at the Button Factory, Dublin by Killian Laher

From what I can make out, Chelsea Wolfe is a bit like Blondie, i.e. the name can refer to the female singer, or the entire group. After a spooky, long drawn out intro, the band opened with the crashing Nine Inch nails style guitars of Carrion Flowers. The effect of this, and much of the set was a bit like Anna Calvi gone metal. The brutal, heavy guitars of Dragged Out worked quite well, but the somewhat homogenous sound and deadly serious demeanour of the band made the night something of an endurance test.

Concentrating mainly on most recent album Abyss, the set was somewhat short, only Maw offering a brief moment of respite, dialling down the barrage of sound for at least half of the song. Miss Wolfe didn’t utter a word until just before the end of the evening, thanking the audience before launching into the most well received song of the night, Pale on Pale. On a pure assault on the senses level the gig worked quite well, producing a monolithic, equal parts trippy and bombastic sound. But there were no truly stand out songs, leaving the night falling short.

Setlist:

Carrion Flowers
Dragged Out
Kings
We Hit A Wall
Maw
After the Fall
House of Metal
Simple Death
Iron Moon
Survive

Encore

Color of Blood
Pale on Pale