Chelsea Wolfe is about to return with her third album Pain is Beauty. It’s a record to which the words “haunting” and “beautiful” do no justice, drenched in a thick, looming atmosphere that doesn’t let up from start to finish.

Since the release of her debut album The Grime and the Glow Wolfe has become well known for her charged, almost frightening take on alternative music. Pain is Beauty steps away from Apokalypsis in some ways, but it doesn’t let up on the Los Angeles based musician’s best asset: her penchant for layered noise build out of her ribcage.

Ahead of the release of Pain is Beauty and our review of it, DrunkenWerewolf’s Tiffany Daniels speaks to Chelsea about recording with her band mate Ben Chisholm, carving something new out of her career and playing live with Queens of the Stone Age.

Hello Chelsea, I hope you’re well! What have you been up to lately and how is album prep coming along?

The album is finished, turned in and getting printed. Lately me and the band have been figuring out how to play these songs live, as it sometimes happens that way… Some songs you play live for a while and then record, some songs you write, record and then have to re-learn for the live set. We’re dealing with that at the moment and trying to work out all the technical kinks along the way. I’ve also been working on film and videos - a short film with a few songs from the new album with director Mark Pellington and a music video shot in the desert for the song “Kings”.

You’re about to release your third studio album Pain is Beauty. How does it compare to Apokalypsis and The Grime and the Glow, in your eyes?

I sometimes don’t think my albums have anything to do with each other because my mental state is so different from one album to the next. The Grime and the Glow was me starting over as a musician, going back to demo-style recording on my 8-track, rebelling against over-produced sounds that I had fallen into when I first started making music. Apokalypsis was a recording that sort of encompassed my live band and I at the time. I would write songs and we would play them at shows and built this sort of energy and I wanted to capture that. That was recorded a long time ago, I think in 2010. Most of Pain is Beauty was recorded in 2012 and grew from a desire to finally release some electronic songs my band mate Ben Chisholm and I had been writing for a few years and also to bring forth some more emotional songs I had inside.

You seem to be a musician who’s very conscious of developing your sound rather than relying on what you know. Would you say that’s fair?

Well, I just don’t like to feel confined to any one sound, genre or style of music. I’ve always been that way and in the past have referred to my music as bipolar or multiple personality because on one album I’ll have an acoustic track, an electronic track, a really gritty sound, a clean sound, etc., but for me I think I bring the songs together with mood and concept. I like to try new things and I like to learn new things, in music and in life.

How did you approach the studio, this time around?

I had the songs recorded in demo version, with most of the parts written. We worked with a great engineer Lars Stalfors at a studio in LA to capture a bigger sound that we could do at the home studio and also to gain some outside insight at times. Then we mixed the album for a good while with Chris Common. For me, mixing is the most important part because you have to remember all the elements and moments that were recorded and bring them together in the right way. I can always see it all in my head but I have to be very conscious and organized so I don’t forget anything.

Was there an aspect of your time in the studio that you consciously wanted to change?

Well I don’t like time limits so I don’t like the pressure of having a strict deadline. Music often works out of time or in slow motion for me so it’s really best if I can take my time to develop everything fully. In the future I’d like to build a better home studio so we can do things on that sort of schedule. I was lucky this time around though to have Chris Common who was very patient with me during the long mixing period.

You worked closely with your bandmate Ben Chisholm on Pain is Beauty. What has he brought to the table?

This project started as and will always essentially be a solo project at heart, but I also have really great bandmates who add so much to the recordings and live experience: Dylan Fujioka (drums), Kevin Dockter (guitars), Ben Chisholm (synths/bass/programming/piano). Ben came along at a time about 3 years ago when I really wanted to add an electronic element to my live band and I didn’t realize then what a great writing partner he’d become. We started writing electronic songs together with the original intent of doing a side project but then we got busy with the Chelsea Wolfe project and as I mentioned, eventually decided to incorporate some of those songs into the album and set. Ben has a great sense of editing. For example, he can take a simple short recording of a voice or violin and within a half hour have it cut up, layered and completely transformed into something totally new and magical. He also created a lot of beats for this new album using only samples of sounds from life around us - like steam and an industrial elevator. And he is a wonderful piano player! Someday we hope to produce other projects together.

Do you find it hard to collaborate objectively with a person that you work with regularly, or do the benefits out way the negatives?

It’s always going to be objective for me, so there’s always going to be some push and pull but we both approach music as our work and take it seriously so we’re willing to put in the time and emotion and energy it takes.

What were your main influences and motivators for writing Pain is Beauty?

Very elemental things like natural disasters, ancestry, the intensity of nature, tormented love. Connection to land and the possibility that the customs and mythology of our ancestors still remains within us through the bloodline. The way humans affect nature and the way that nature can overpower us in a second. The colors of nature. Loss of love in a natural disaster.

The title Pain is Beauty fits in nicely with your goth-influenced sound, but why did you specifically choose it as the name for this album?

It felt like a summary to all the different ideas and themes of the album. I like for a title to sum things up but to also be open to interpretation. For me it sometimes represents a healing process. The new growth that happens in the forest after a fire. The same way in our lives - we go through the fire, we overcome, we grow stronger, wiser, and that to me is beautiful.

You’re about to embark on a huge world tour this autumn. Do you prefer life on the road to life in the studio?

 I love recording, even though it’s a tedious process. I think listening to a recording is somehow more intimate than being in a room full of people at a live show, but I also have come to appreciate playing live and seeing other bands live.. I understand it more. It’s taken me a long time to feel even remotely comfortable on stage in front of people, but at times the energy is so powerful, of the space, from the audience, that it all makes sense and it’s so special. I look forward to these tours because I’m excited to play the new songs and introduce a new album to the world, and we also get to tour with some bands I really love - Russian Circles in Europe and True Widow in the US. I also look forward to tour because it’s a vacation from my spider-ridden home in Los Angeles. I live in a very old house and as soon as I start spending too much time there it begins to attack me! I have so many spider bites right now because I’ve been back for the summer. Los Angeles is not really my home, I just work there. I’ll return to Northern California when I can.

What can the world expect from Chelsea Wolfe in the not too distant future?

We’re opening for Queens of the Stone Age on Saturday - one of my favorite bands so that will be a treat. After that we play a festival in Los Angeles and then hit the road for the US tour. I’m already writing new songs in the meantime. Like I said, music never happens in order or in time. I’m writing and thinking about the next album even though I’m in the throes of the current one. I also just spent some time in Seattle recording some more collaborative songs with one of my favorites, King Dude. We released a split 7” earlier this year and will likely have another one in 2014.

CHELSEA WOLFE IS ON TOUR NOW SEE ALL TOUR DATES HERE

Click above to see the photo gallery by Paul R. Guinta for Prefix Mag of last nights Sold Out show at the Gibson Amphitheater: Chelsea Wolfe supporting Queens of the Stone Age.

And don’t miss Chelsea Wolfe playing FYF Fest this Sunday, August 25th at 4:45pm or on her headline tour with True Widow as support - SEE ALL CHELSEA WOLFE DATES HERE

Where the sparse arrangements of her 2012 acoustic album, Unknown Rooms, spotlighted the incremental fluctuations of her voice, Chelsea Wolfe‘s Pain Is Beauty feels like a more wide-angled affair, folding her soprano into swaths of strings and pulsating synths until the result feels as a vast and intimidating as the wild expanses of land and water she’s singing about. Wolfe has called the album her “love-letter to nature,” and while the switch to a more electronic palette would seem to contradict this mission statement, the repetitive, melodically cyclical chorus on “The Waves Have Come” grows with the awe-inspiring momentum of a real-life tornado. Fittingly, there’s a trace of the literary notion of the sublime (or the co-existence of of terror and ecstasy) in the scenario she describes in the song: When earth cracks open and swallows then we’ll never be tired again, and we’ll be given everything the moment we realize we’re not in control. Pain is Beauty Out September 3 via Sargent House.

SEE ALL CHELSEA WOLFE SHOW DETAILS HERE

CHELSEA WOLFE
8/25 - Los Angeles, CA @ FYF Fest, LA History Park
9/01 - Tucson, AZ @ HOCO Festival at Hotel Congress

CHELSEA WOLFE & TRUE WIDOW
9/03 - Phoenix, AZ @ The Crescent Ballroom
9/04 - Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
9/06 - Austin, TX @ Mohawk
9/07 - Houston, TX @ Fitzgerald’s
9/08 - New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks
9/09 - Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
9/10 - Chapel Hill @ Local 506
9/11 - Washington DC @ Rock and Roll Hotel
9/13 - NYC, New York @ Bowery Ballroom
9/14 - Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
9/15 - Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
9/17 - Toronto, ONT @ Horseshoe Tavern (NO True Widow)
9/19 - Pontiac, MI @ The Pike Room at Crofoot Ballroom
9/20 - Lexington, KY @ Boomslang Festival
9/21 - Chicago, IL - The Bottom Lounge
9/22 - Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center
9/24 - Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge
9/25 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
9/26 - Boise, ID @ The Shredder
9/27 - Seattle, WA @ Barboza
9/28 - Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge
9/30 - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall

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To celebrate the upcoming European tour together and the new albums coming from both  Chelsea Wolfe and Russian Circles - Sargent House has made both bands last albums only $5 each in any file size you like all this weekend starting today - Thursday, August 22nd - Sunday, August 25th.


Pre-Order the NEW album “Pain Is Beauty" by Chelsea Wolfe HERE
Release date: September 3, 2013
SEE ALL CHELSEA WOLFE TOUR DATES HERE

Chelsea Wolfe's new album Pain Is Beauty is out next week, September 3rd via Sargent House. The follow-up to last year’s Unknown Rooms is available to stream here in full via Pitchfork Advance.

Pre-Order the album on CD or Vinyl HERE

CHELSEA WOLFE  ON TOUR NOW SEE ALL DATES

Sacramento native Chelsea Wolfe has a unique sound. Inside her goth-flavoured concoction are drops of industrial rock, a dash of melodrama, a couple jiggers of synthpop and a half-pound of meaty folk. She admits to being influenced by black metal, doom and drone music, as well as Scandinavian folk, which probably explains her array of styles. It’s a potent brew she possesses, comprising simmering darkness and glamorous overtones in a similar vein to Wisconsin opera fiend Zola Jesus. Wolfe’s mesmerising noises are often tough to stick under one particular label, but her goth-folk tendencies tend to shine through prominently; she weaves a brittle, sinister aural tapestry, but it’s also intimate and emotive; there’s a distinct lack of vacuousness, which is nice.

Following on from 2012′s Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs (album two-and-a-half, if you will), Pain Is Beauty is Wolfe’s third studio effort. She has said that it’s a “love letter to nature” and “an exploration of ancestry, how the mythology, landscapes and traditions of our ancestors affect our personalities today.” Originally a self-conscious performer who hid behind a veil in early shows, and one who departed music for years, unwilling to share her tracks with others, Wolfe is venturing out of her shell on this record. It’s more synthetic, more neo-goth and post-industrial, and while folky threads are visible still, they’re considerably dialed down; guitars lie on the back burner on many tracks.

‘Sick’ is a gigantic, sprawling spacetronica paean. Equal parts frontier-bending excitement and shadowy sturm und drang, it oozes emotion of catastrophic proportions; this is the kind of music you’d hear as the world burned. Shimmering, shivering strings shriek beneath soaring synth sections. The music is fluid, and though armageddon-y, oddly tranquil – it’s a juxtaposition with panache. ‘Lone’ is similar in tone – reserved and calm like the eye of a hurricane. Pastoral chords ring through a swathe of reverb, and Wolfe’s hymnal croon pierces a delicate cloak of acoustic guitar. She shudders and gasps amongst the rivulets of noise, encapsulating desolation within minute textures and barren instrumentation.

More rambunctious cuts include opener ‘Feral Love’. With sparse ’70s horror flick synths – think John Carpenter – and a dash of The/Das broody synthpop, Wolfe tears into her third effort with gusto. Brutal beats akin to Crystal Castles‘ ‘Fainting Spells’ pepper the melodics like a tommy gun against a car door. ‘Feral Love’ is indeed a feral ode, with sonic tendrils whipping and lashing as if a new-wave Cthulu. ‘Kings’ is a descent into the kingdom of politics, there’s post-punk on ‘We Hit A Wall’, ‘The Warden’ spews goth-house sensibilities and a Venetian guitar riff. While there’s a decent dose of honest writing and narratives centred around tumultuous love, there’s plenty of in-your-face hooks for it to be infectious. It’s got a gloss that lures you back even when you may be spurned by morose lyrics.

There’s a similarity with Chelsea Wolfe and other contemporary outfits with a gothic bent – Nadine Shah, M O N E Y, Zola Jesus and Anna Von Hausswolffare to be heard throughout. Although the acts may bear resemblance to one another, they all also manage to be distinct; Wolfe does this through her black metal and folk facets. While not explicitly either of those genres, she borrows from both: black metal lends an omnipresent evil, and folk bequeaths a brittle, beating heart. She succeeds in slotting neatly next to a cadre of rising contemporaries, but twisting away to carve her own niche.

Wolfe has crafted an impeccable release here, building upon her existing methods and evolving as a songwriter. Things feel more confident – there’s more energy and oomph (perhaps as a result of the shift in instrumental focus). It’s not exactly swaggering, but you can hear her experiment more; she’s not afraid to stray from the straight’n’narrow. Within those expanded boundaries, we get a breadth of fresh noises. It’s still overtly maudlin, and Wolfe is definitely not afraid to jam a knife between your ribs and wiggle it a little, but it possesses a certain charm that will keep you coming back for more.

Taken from an article by Laurence Day on TLOBF

You can buy the album, Pain is Beauty, via Bandcamp Now.

Chelsea Wolfe is touring Europe with Russian Circles in October/November 2013. For a list of full dates, Click Here.

CHELSEA WOLFE
“Pain Is Beauty”
(Sargent House)

A shudder of emotional torment, poised between a swoon and a sob, resides in the voice of Chelsea Wolfe, and the ambiguity feels custom fitted to the music. “Pain Is Beauty,” her fourth album in three years, confirms her steadiness as a singer-songwriter of gothic intention, drawn to romantic fatalism and beautiful ruin.

Ms. Wolfe, who originally hails from Sacramento, has made her name in Los Angeles, and there’s a sly connotation of noir in her whole enterprise. Her first two albums — “The Grime and the Glow” and “Apokalypsis,” on Pendu sound - put her forth as a sepulchral wraith. Her third, “Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs” (Sargent House), exuded a spare and chilling composure, more intimate but hardly less opaque.

She produced “Pain Is Beauty” with Ben Chisholm, who plays bass and synthesizer on the album, alongside the guitarist Kevin Dockter and the drummer Dylan Fujioka. (The same personnel are currently on a tour that reaches the Bowery Ballroom on Sept. 13.) There’s a slight push toward synthetic texture, though the prevailing sound still involves her voice against a twangy guitar, both bathed in cavernous reverb. Mainly the electronics furnish details like the rhythmic thrum in “Feral Love,” which calls to mind the fleet of helicopters in the opening scene of “Short Cuts,” the Robert Altman film.

You don’t have to reach to find other cinematic elements on the album, from the horror-movie organ drone of “Kings” to the washed-out retro-pop of “Destruction Makes the World Burn Brighter,” offered in tribute to David Lynch. Elsewhere the allusions feel more rooted in the realm of music, as when “House of Metal” coalesces around a dolorous, slow-to-unfold arpeggio, evoking Portishead.

Ms. Wolfe has often said that she draws inspiration from Scandinavian black metal, but it’s a fair question whether that claim has more to do with an image, or an idea, than it does with actual sound. On a few of these new songs, like “We Hit a Wall,” her singing is actually most reminiscent of Feist.

In any case, the attractive but suffocating atmosphere on “Pain Is Beauty” should be understood as precise aesthetic calculation. On “The Waves Have Come,” Ms. Wolfe sings slowly and heartbreakingly from the vantage of a tsunami survivor. On “Sick,” she basks in the toxic runoff of a relationship. And a doom-folkish tune called “They’ll Clap When You’re Gone” includes the line “I carry a heaviness like a mountain” — a stoical complaint that sounds as if it’s sung inside a grain silo, in abject and perfect solitude. NATE CHINEN

Chelsea Wolfe performs a special rendition of “We Hit a Wall” from her new album Pain Is Beauty that is out today, September 3, 2013 on Sargent House. Video shot live from Sonos Studio courtesy of Rhapsody Music.

Get Chelsea Wolfe’s Pain Is Beauty on VINYL or CD HERE
or on Itunes

CHELSEA WOLFE IS ON TOUR NOW SEE ALL DATES HERE

When Chelsea Wolfe is giving it all that she’s got, as on big, string-laden anthems like “House of Metal” and “The Waves Have Come,” it’s like her voice also contains something of a whisper within it, a tinge of breathy spaciousness that feels somehow kinesthetically continuous with the wide open, natural vistas that she’s singing about. Her voice is less the human focal point of her new album, Pain Is Beauty, though, than the LP’s instrumental center, the defining atmospheric element in a churning pool of moods and melodies that seems to always be on the verge of drowning in its own romantic oblivion—until it suddenly throws you for a new turn, that is. I spoke to Wolfe about her departure from the acoustic arrangements of her last full-length effort, Unknown Rooms, and why pain can be beautiful sometimes. The album is out now via Sargent House.

You’re returning to a more electronic palette this time around. What led to that decision? They’re actually songs that [synth and bass player] Ben [Chisholm]and I have been working on for 2 or 3 years now. We started doing electronic songs in the mindset that we would do a side project with them, and we didn’t really have time to do that. We just started playing them live in the Chelsea Wolfe project and decided that we wanted them to be Chelsea Wolfe songs, and we sort of re-approached them and added new life to them. And it’s really fun playing the electronic songs live as well, so that was part of the motivation.

What’s fun about it? It’s just a totally different energy. I’m so used to guitar-driven music. It still has guitar and drums driving it; it’s still a full band feel in my opinion. But having my hands free a lot and just being able to focus on singing and using my voice as an instrument is really new and interesting for me.

What aspects of vocal technique do you think about now that you didn’t think necessarily think about before? I don’t know. I think it’s just taking a song and kind of naturally going with what voice comes to me, like whether it’s something that’s more whispery and intimate or something that’s really loud and me singing with all my strength. I think there’s a few different kinds of voices on this album, and it’s kind of me exploring what my voice can do and what each song needs. I definitely like to try new things and experiment with new sounds, and I have always thought of the human voice as an instrument; that’s why I like to sing through pedals a lot.

What would you say that you took away from making the acoustic album? I suppose it was an exercise in keeping things minimal. I really love recording, so I love adding tons of harmonies and layers. The acoustic album was definitely my more folky, minimal songs, and it was an exercise in holding back and trying to keep them where they need to be and not making every song feel really epic. It was a lesson in simplicity.

How’d you come up with the album title, Pain Is Beauty? A lot of the songs on the album are about the intensity of nature: the way that nature affects humanity and the way that humanity affects nature. There’s this sense that there’s so many things we have to overcome, and so many processes that have to go through. It almost could have been titled “Pain Becomes Beauty,” because when you think about forest fires and things like that, it seems like such a terrible thing and it’s so harsh, but it really makes new room for growth to happen. It can be the same in our own lives—there’s always gonna be situations that we go through that are really hard and we just have to kind of be strong, and if we get through to the other side, then we become wiser people and our lives become more beautiful. There’s definitely a beauty on the other side of that transformation.

Are you someone who spends a lot of time in nature personally? I try to. It’s hard, living in LA and being really busy. I’m from Northern California. I really love it up there. I spent a lot of time when I was a kid in the giant redwoods and going to the river and the ocean and things like that, so I definitely try as many chances as I get to go back up to Northern California and free my mind—quiet my mind a little bit.

The press release for the album also mentions an exploration of ancestry. Is that referring to something in the deep past or something in the more recent, American past? I think a lot of it for me was this idea that maybe there’s so many unhappy people in America because we’re living on a land that is basically stolen from people who already lived here. There’s this sort of unrest that maybe still lives in the ground or the air; it’s kind of about energies. Also, most everyone that lives here comes from somewhere else. My own personal family is mostly Norwegian and Germanic. It’s kind of interesting to think about the mythology of our ancestors and wondering if it still kind of lingers in us somewhere—something that exists through the bloodline of a family. There’s one song that’s more specifically about it: the one that’s called “Ancestors, the Ancients.” It’s just something that’s been on my mind.

You’ve said that the songs on this album are some of the most honest songs you’ve written. What sort of soul-searching, beyond this ancestry idea, went into the making of this album? I don’t know if I think about it as “soul-searching,” but I think often times I write about things that are outside of myself. I write stories about other people’s lives, and I try and think about things from other people’s perspectives, but on this one I think there’s more songs that are more from my perspective, more from experience. There’s an honesty to this album that comes from somewhere inside of me that I wasn’t ready to expose in the past. I guess I just didn’t want to write a bunch of break-up albums, where I was talking about my personal life and things like that. I still don’t talk about my personal life very much. Even photo-wise, for the cover, I definitely covered myself up in different ways. This is the first album where you can fully see me, and I tried to be brave in that respect.

How do you usually write the lyrics? Do you come up with melodies first? It usually happens at the same time. I guess I’m always writing things down if I have some sort of idea in mind. A lot of times, it starts with a concept or a subject that I’m interested in—like I said, ancestry or the intensity of nature. One of the songs on the album is very directly inspired by the earthquake and tsunami that happened in Japan that there was so much footage of on TV; it was just so insane to watch that happen. And then I watched a documentary and a lot of it was first-hand footage; as soon as I watch something like that, it really just sticks in my head, and I ended up sitting down and writing a couple songs about that. I usually just write when information comes, and a lot of times the whole song comes at once, melody and words and everything. It’s not a conceptual album. There’s a lot of different things it’s about: it’s about ancestry, it’s about nature, it’s about tormented love and sort of overcoming the odds. There’s a lot of different themes on this album.

I want to hear more about the tormented love aspect. I think often sometimes people forget how much hardship can go into love and making love and a relationship work. I think it’s presented to us from the time we’re children as something that should be so easy and perfect and beautiful, but it actually takes a lot of patience and a lot of sweat and tears. So I guess I was trying to think of things from a more realistic side. Beyond that, it can be confusing, and you fall in and out of love, so there’s torment there.

Do you think it’s in expressing that torment that you can overcome it in some way? I suppose so. One of the songs was loosely inspired by the end of the book 1984. I read that book a long time ago, and I always hated that he gave his true love up— he named her or whatever. He was being tortured, and he was like, No, torture her. Put her in my place. I always hated that, and I wrote my own ending to it. There’s an idealism in me that you should be strong enough to fight for the one that you love and take pain for the one that you love. That’s my way of being romantic, I suppose. How love is so—just the way it’s presented in the media. It’s so gross these days. I don’t know if I want to get into it because I don’t like to comment on other people’s work or lives. But I think generally people might know what I mean when I say that.

Generally speaking, is there anything you want people to take away from this album? A few people who have heard it have commented that it feels very healing to listen to, and that was one of the highest compliments that I could receive, really. If someone can take that away from listening to the album—like a sense of healing and the sense that you’ve been able to overcome something—that’s really special to me.

Did you feel healing in making it? Yeah, I definitely think there was a process of healing for myself as well— just learning about the process of overcoming, as I’m writing about it. A lot of times I’ll write about things that I want to learn more about.

The void is a place you might shy away from.  But Chelsea Wolfe lives there, digging for all the melodies in the abyss. After an album she doesn’t want you to remember about was released, Wolfe took years off and redefined her musical career. Releasing The Grime and The Glow in 2010 welcomed a much darker and moodier vibe to a rewarding listen - one of the better and more underappreciated debuts of the past few years. Apokalypsis was an album more people paid attention to, matching more sinister vibes than her previous and reaching further into the heavier melodies. But last year’s Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs showed Wolfe taking a reserved approach to her content, making tracks like “The Way We Used To” and “Flatlands” shining brightly instead of dimly.

But Pain Is Beauty towers over all of these. Her fourth album is the summation of all efforts and an impressive one at that. It’s emotionally draining and it’s cinematically shocking, at the very least. Conceptually binding an album isn’t such a new thing, but Wolfe does it with justice and with success, and Pain Is Beauty is one of those listens no one can forget. Throughout this album, there are moments of immense, breathtaking intensity worth delving into and revisiting for years to come. Not only is this a particularly great album, Pain Is Beauty is one of the more unique albums you’ll listen to this year.

One characteristic of her earlier albums is the sheer amount of layers of music. Everything is delicately placed on a platter to showcase the right amount of emotion. In many ways, this is a main characteristic of Pain Is Beauty - the tiniest noises bring you further into the mix, noticing its every detail. All of this sits beautifully in the background, with Chelsea Wolfe’s voice - wounded, heartbreaking, and sharp as a knife - leading the song, with her own voice as an instrument. She deliberately affects her voice with pedals - obscuring her own voice in the darkness - and hits high notes with unyielding intensity that pierces your soul.

Wolfe, along with multi-instrumentalist Ben Chisholm, utilized darker synthetic sounds on many tracks, including lead single “The Warden,” which reimagines the ending to George Orwell’s 1984 and touches on one of the larger themes on the album - love. These evocative and urgent sounds are executed much more prominently and successfully than previous efforts, but do not rule the album’s soundscape. Tracks like “We Hit A Wall” and “They’ll Clap When You’re Gone” are sinister doom in music form, with earth-shattering, heavy, thick, and deep guitars that rumble your mind.

Pain Is Beauty is a complex behemoth. It is filled with primal screams, topical journeys, and romantic statements. Rich in musical variety, “Destruction Makes The World Burn Brighter” has a serpentine-like structure, channeling Joy Division to a certain extent. It’s also one of the better song titles in recent memory. Ambient tracks like “Sick” and “Reins” apply repetition to the max, bringing an utmost haunting tone to these two. The last four tracks are truly various. “Ancestors, The Ancients” is a darkly, synthy, and subtle cut, while “They’ll Clap When You’re Gone” pulls out the guitar for a jangly, acoustic tale. This one has Wolfe singing, “When can I die? / When can I go? // When will I be free? / When will I know?” Beyond the stark depressive nature, Wolfe mystically pleads for answers through dazzling chants.

“The Waves Have Come” is the album’s climax, jarringly putting together a tale about a man who’s about to be swallowed in a tsunami. Tapping at virtually two keys on a piano throughout, the track swells and swells until the ultimate crash wipes away everything you’ve heard up to this point, washing away everything you know. This eight-minute goliath is the zenith of the album, flying to all new plateaus seen thus far, with bleeding strings and Wolfe’s vocals delivering heavenly notes above the layers upon layers of instrumentation. The outro has Wolfe crying vocally, “The waves have come and taken you to sea / Never to return to me / Never to return to me / Never to return to me.” Ultimately, the bleak outro of slowly drawing out the climactic finish is a resounding and cleansing feeling. Chelsea Wolfe spoke about Pain Is Beauty, explaining that the album gave a healing impression. “The Waves Have Come” and the defining outro “Lone” wrap up the album to give it a very healing ending, after the onslaught of doom, intensity, and emotion.

Pain Is Beauty shocks. It loudly proclaims its motives from the very start and explores melodies for the duration of the album. Music doesn’t find very many visionaries anymore, and Chelsea Wolfe brands her darkly emotive music as an artistic representation of herself. Sculpting the greatest sum of tracks Wolfe has ever created, Pain Is Beauty, shines in the void that she dwells in. Bleak, distant, polarizing, and beautiful, Wolfe’s fourth album makes a gargantuan impact.

Chelsea Wolfe is currently on tour, check out ArtistData for more information.

Buy/Stream Pain is Beauty on Bandcamp.

Chelsea Wolfe is an omnivore personified. While many artists claim to be so special snowflake-y as to transcend genre, Wolfe really does, with influences as diverse as PJ Harvey, Townes Van Zandt, and Burzum. Listening to her dark art-folk concoctions, one vacillates between empathetic and unnerved; her distinctive voice is equal parts haunting and haunted, natural and supernatural, shiveringly vulnerable and coldly elemental.

Born and raised in northern California, Wolfe spent much of her youth writing songs on keyboard and guitar, inspired by the country and folk records of her country musician father, as well as louder stuff like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. As an adult, she grew more serious about music, putting a band together and releasing her debut full-length The Grime and the Glow  in 2010.

In 2011, she moved to Los Angeles and recorded her follow-up Apokalypsis, which pricked up many ears with its skillful mixture of spooky atmospherics, plaintive melodies, and big, open chords like waves lapping at some icy black shore. The following year, she released Unknown Rooms, a collection of acoustic songs exploring her minimalist folk roots. All of these wanderings were threaded together by Wolfe‘s dark — but not cheesy –aesthetic and versatile voice.

Now, with the support of her longtime bandmates, including co-producer Ben Chisholm, she’s back with another studio album, Pain Is Beauty, a “love letter to nature” that combines elements of all that came before while showing an increasing interest in electronic elements. It’s the kind of record you put on when you want to be transported from the daily bullshit of Twitter fights and smelly subway cars to some ancient, melancholy precipice over the void. Or, conversely, if you just want to listen to some great fucking sad person music.

Before embarking on her imminent world tour, Chelsea took some time out to talk to Hive on the phone from her home in L.A. about California, sad girls, and whether there’s any hope for mankind. She was also kind enough to soldier on with the interview after slamming her finger in a door, which we appreciate.

What was it like growing up in northern California?

I really like northern California… when I was a kid we would go camping a lot. We’d go see the giant redwood trees and I really loved that… I just love California in general.

How do you feel about the ocean? It seems to pop up a lot in your lyrics.

I love the ocean, I love water in general and I really love to swim…I love being around bodies of water.

Did you have any kind of subcultural affiliation in high school?

I was somewhere between being an outcast and being friends with everyone… my friends and I would walk around during lunch and talk to anyone, really. I was friends with the metal kids, the jocks, I had friends in every different group. I guess I didn’t really fit in anywhere… I tried a lot of different things, sports and things like that, but I was never really part of one particular group.

It’s good to hear you were not a stereotypical outcast. What kinds of boys did you like?

I always liked boys with long hair. Like, metal guys.

Do you still?

Yeah… I mean, I like lots of different kinds of people.

I have a friend who will only date guys who look like goth cowboys.

I have a good friend who’s definitely a goth cowboy, so if she ever wants to meet him, she can come to L.A.

Maybe we can hook them up?

Totally.

So what kind of music did you like growing up? Your dad was a musician, yeah?

My dad was a country musician while I was growing up, so I definitely got turned onto a lot of really good old country when I was a kid. One of the first people l I really loved was Hank Williams, and Johnny Cash… my dad would listen to Fleetwood Mac a lot and his band would cover Fleetwood Mac songs, so I always really loved Fleetwood Mac; that band taught me a lot about harmonies. Also, my dad turned me onto Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and stuff like that in high school.

Oh yeah, I was going to ask how you went from country to “darker” kinds of music… not that country can’t be dark!

I guess I wasn’t really into dark music per se ever… I don’t feel like my musical tastes really shaped the kind of music that I make. I didn’t listen to a lot of music in general growing up, other than what my dad would show me. But eventually different friends and bandmates turned me onto black metal bands and some other bands, so I have a pretty wide range of different kinds of music that I like.

I just came across an article that namechecks you as one person responsible for bringing Burzum (and black metal in general) to a wider indie rock audience. How do you reconcile your love of this music with the deplorable beliefs of the guy (Varg Vikernes) who makes it?

When I first moved to L.A. I didn’t have many friends, I stayed alone a lot in my house and recorded things. I had recently started listening to black metal and really liked this song “Black Spell of Destruction” by Burzum. It had so much beautiful white noise and his voice was like an animal’s snarl. I woke up one day early, maybe 6 or 7 a.m. and had an idea to cover this song so by 8 a.m. I was working on it, recorded it that day, put it on YouTube and kind of forgot about it. But then a writer Brandon Stosuy who used to be at Stereogum posted it up, and since he’s very influential it was the first many heard of me. So really, we can thank this strange black metal man for people hearing about me.

I don’t think anything I did brought any more or less fame to him — he was a black-metal-music making, church-burning… uhm, and he killed someone from Mayhem — I don’t think he needed any help getting famous. I didn’t know anything about him when I covered him, to be honest. I also didn’t do that cover to get any recognition, I did it because I liked a song and I was bored and lonely.

That’s fair. So a lot of people get mad if you call them “Goth.” They’re like “No, I’m death rock” or “I’m post punk” or whatever. Do you have a problem with the term?

No, because I have so many different styles of music within this one project. I’ve done acoustic folk stuff, I’ve done rock and roll, electronic songs on my new album. I really don’t like to feel boxed in or put labels on my own project, but whatever people wanna call it is fine with me. It’s gonna be different depending on your background and which album of mine you hear first.

Are there any people making music now who you’d consider to be kindred spirits?

I don’t usually really group myself in with anyone. I usually leave that up to people, because everyone does that anyway.

How about just artists you like?

We’ve definitely gotten to play with a lot of bands I like in the past year. Over in Japan, we got to open for Swans and Queens of the Stone Age this year. Those are all three bands I like and really look up to.

I heard a band covering one of your songs at St Vitus the other night. How do you feel about it when people cover you?

It’s definitely a new thing for me, I’m used to covering other people’s music. But recently Mark Lanegan did an album with a lot of covers on it, and he covered one of my acoustic songs called “Flatlands,” and that was a pretty big honor cause I really love his voice.

Rad! You’re about to go on tour — are you stoked? Do you like that part of your job?

Yeah, I’ve grown to like it. It was a big challenge at first because I didn’t like being onstage in front of people. Over time I’ve just sort of accepted it, knowing it’s part of my job as a musician. But ideally I think I would be invisible when I played live.

I’m looking forward to playing with True Widow, they’re going on tour with us, they’re a great band. I think it’s gonna be a fun time.

What helped you get more comfortable onstage? Was it the fans, or something else?

Yeah definitely, the energy of the audience — the room and everything — it’s definitely a lot easier to let go and get into the music. If there’s any sort of technical difficulty or people are talking or not paying attention, I get distracted and it makes it harder, but typically I’ve found that people are really respectful, and I guess I’ve been getting better at being onstage. I just make sure to give it my all no matter what, even if I’m really uncomfortable, because I think it’s important. People came out to see a show and I want to give them everything I have.

It’s funny you say you want to disappear, because I feel like your visual aesthetic is more a part of the experience than it is for most bands who get covered on Pitchfork or whatever.

I don’t typically do a lot of visuals live other than a bit of lighting or something like that, because I want people to be able to close their eyes and see what they see when they hear the music, but I think the reason I dress up sometimes and have gotten into fashion and things like that is it actually helps me overcome my stage fright. At first I would wear a veil over my face and wear all black and cover myself up because I’d really wanna be invisible, and it helped me get through it, but eventually I decided that I needed to stop. I didn’t want it to become some sort of gimmick or something, like “girl that wears a veil,” you know? Eventually I overcame that and instead of totally covering myself up, I decided to dress up and have fun with it, depending on whatever mood I’m in that night. So I guess that helped me with not wanting to be on stage, dressing up for the occasion.

On the topic of your aesthetic, I’m also thinking about the album art and the fact that you publish your lyrics. It reminds me of when I was a kid and I’d buy a CD and look at the art and read all the words and digest them. Now, people just listen to mp3s in their iTunes. Is that experience important to you? The album as a physical object?

Yeah, I think it’s nice that I’m finally on a label that allows me to do that, which is great…in the past I had to keep it really simple due to budget issues. But with my label, we were finally able to do a bit of artwork, and we brought in an outside artist, his name’s Trevor Hernandez, and he put together the layout. And I knew that I wanted to have themes of intense nature and feeling uncomfortable in the spotlight, and I think it came together really cool and it was fun for me to try, making more extensive artwork for an album.

What do you do to unwind when you have a break at home? It’s hard to picture you, like, eating a Dominos pizza and watching trashy TV.

I typically go visit family up north. I have a lot of family that lives in the hills about 4 miles out of town in the woods, and I really like to go up there and spend time with family. In the winter I like chopping wood and weird meditative things like that. I really love to swim, another meditative thing for me. I definitely like TV but I don’t have one at the moment, so…I think I don’t have one so I don’t watch it all the time, you know?

Yeah, totally. But when you do watch TV, what shows do you like?

I like watching those kinds of shows where they fix up old houses and stuff like that. Or, like, the History Channel is always a good one. National Geographic, that kind of shit.

Do you ever watch “Ancient Aliens”? I’m not sure how this qualifies as history, but it’s all about aliens making contact with humans over the centuries.

I haven’t seen that one, but I’ve heard about it.

So you’ve got a lot of natural imagery in your new album’s lyrics and also a lot of horror imagery, and it kind of reminded me of Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist.” Have you seen that movie? Did you like it?

It was definitely an interesting persepctive on nature… obviously visually, the way it was portrayed which was really intense and beautiful. I think he’s got a pretty amazing eye.

I got in some arguments with my friend, who is sort of a gender essentialist, after seeing this movie. Do you think there is anything especially animalistic about being a woman?

I think there’s an instinctual sense within women and it’s also kind of reflected in pure love, this sense of survival and doing anything to survive and protect your family, and that’s kind of what I was thinking about, love in an animalistic sense, but it could also be an instinctual thing.

On that note, this might be a dumb question, but what’s your favorite animal?

I love cats. When I was a small kid my grandmother took me to an animal sanctuary and this cheetah and I made eye contact. He walked up to me slowly and then we stared at each other for maybe 5 minutes straight. I took a photo of him and felt really connected to big cats from then on. I asked my dad to buy me this giant poster of a black panther laying across a red ’80s corvette when I was in elementary school. He didn’t understand why I wanted a car poster, but all I could see was this majestic cat!

That’s funny. So the lyrics you write are sort of broadly interpretable. Are you thinking of current events at all when you create this sort of bleak vision of the world? Or is it more personal?

It kind of depends… when I wrote “The Waves Have Come,” I’d just watched a documentary about the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan. So certain songs are certainly affected by world events and things like that, but it kind of depends on the song.

We’re about to bomb Syria, that’s pretty crazy.

Yeah, that’s pretty intense, I was just talking about that with my family. I mean, there’s always shit going on, but it kind feels like the world is going crazy right now.

Yeah. I thought about that when I listened to your song “Kings.” Is that one about world leaders?

I can’t actually remember what I was thinking about when I wrote that song. It’s kind of a combination of things in your personal life, falling from grace…but it could also be a larger take on leadership and the world. I’m really sorry, I just slammed my finger in the door really hard so I’m a little distracted.

I’m sorry! Are you okay?

Yeah. I’m just a little bit distracted.

[a pause in which I make sure she’s okay to continue talking]

It’s cool that your songs can apply to such different things. Do you generally want people to figure out what they’re about, or do you like that they can have different meanings?

I prefer to leave them open to interpretation, because I like people to have their own take on things. I don’t like defining my songs for people even if I know what they mean to me, I don’t want them to know exactly what they’re about and take whatever their own experience is and their own outlook and reflect it onto the song so they can understand it for themselves and what it means to them.

Is this ultimately a nihilistic record? Do you think there’s any hope for humanity? Or will you leave that open to interpretation, too?

I’m always kind of looking at things in a very back and forth way… in the macro sense, I get overwhelmed thinking about the world at large and how much there is going on and how it seems so unfixable…and when I think about it in the micro, small relationships, being good to the people around you and being patient and kind and things like that, that’s also important. I go back and forth thinking about the world at large and the smallness of our own lives.

I feel that. So before you said you were influenced by literature and other nonmusical stuff — what kind of stuff are you into now or when you were writing this album?

I really like DH Lawrence “Sons and Lovers,” a book that I’ve read a couple times, it’s inspired a lot of songs, the way that he writes about nature and the relationships in the book. I really love Werner Herzog films, and sometimes when I’m feeling uninspired or bored with life I’ll watch his films and get inspired, because he makes everyday situations all over the world feel really magical and beautiful and special for me.

What’s your favorite place outside of where you live now?

I really love going to Norway and Sweden, Scandanavia in general I suppose. I guess my favorite place in the world is California, but on tour i’m always happy to go to Stockholm, Sweden, and Oslo, Norway.

Are there parallels between the two? California is thought of as some sort of sunshine state, but it’s got spooky forests too, right?

It’s kind of like everything here, which is what’s so great about it. I sound like an ad for a California tourism commercial or something.

They should hire you to make some ads for them!

I think Best Coast has that covered. Didn’t she write a song about California?

Yeah, but it was a different kind of song. You could start a campaign to make sad girls come to Cali.

Sad girls? Is that what you said? (laughing) Am I a sad girl? Is that how I come across?

I don’t know if you’re a sad girl, but your music definitely has sad girl appeal. You tell me!

I dunno. I mean, I hope it appeals to lots of different kinds of people, but sad girls are definitely welcome.

We appreciate it. I mean, I say I’m a sad girl… I’m actually pretty happy with my life, but I love sad music the most.

Yeah, totally. We all love sad music sometimes.

Pain Is Beauty is out now via Sargent House.

Chelsea Wolfe has been a long time coming. Over the past four years, the Sacramento songstress has been staggeringly prolific, but it was with last year’s Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs that she first left her indelible mark. Now, with the release of her fourth LP, Pain Is Beauty, Wolfe has further refined her sound, stripping it of its most abrasive qualities and further exposing the bruised, gnarled heart at its centre.

Wolfe’s progress from shy ingenue distorting her work to a songwriter with a cryptic depth of feeling and emotional command has been gradual but concurrent with her own battle with public introversion. The Pain Is Beauty sleeve, for instance, “represents an intense discomfort with being in the spotlight but also fighting to overcome that,” according to Wolfe.

Playing live is a struggle in this regard. “Some nights are really magical and everything comes together in a good way and some nights are tough and I’m fighting the urge to just throw it all down and run off stage. I love writing music and I love playing music but sometimes I wish I could just be invisible when I’m up there.”

It would be a shame if that urge got the better of Wolfe because Pain Is Beauty deserves a spotlight: from the dark, gothic pulse of ‘Feral Love’ to the haunting coo that ushers ‘Lone’ to its end, it is an album of towering strength and remarkable beauty. It’s her best to date, and while it retains some of the dirging, repetitive elements of her lesser early albums there are pained detours into melody throughout. Exploring more traditional musical alleys instead of relying on rabid textures and obfuscating noise is most definitely a welcome development and further proof of Wolfe’s commitment to open herself to a larger audience and the world at large.

Unknown Rooms showcased a vulnerability that is further exposed on Pain Is Beauty. The former album’s limited acoustic palette laid both Wolfe the person and Wolfe the songwriter bare, but such a stripped approach was less challenging than you might think. “I’ve gone back and forth between sounds and styles my whole life so it wasn’t strange for me… it was more of a gathering of songs that fit under the “acoustic” label somehow and finding the right ones to live on that album. Some of them were five-years-old and some were new.”

Indeed, Pain Is Beauty initially runs far away from Unknown Room's can't-look-away intimacy. The two tracks released over the summer, 'We Hit a Wall' and 'The Warden', are loud and proud, the former a stark, stabbing chronicle of a relationship at the breaking point while the latter flutters menacingly as Wolfe wails into the ether.

Though it may not be as elemental as its predecessor, it is still quite restrained at points. Sometimes in service of some galloping climax, other times to emphasise Wolfe’s veiled lyricism, but it’s clear she is still taking steps to extend herself. In this regard, she says she has only benefitted from her relationship with her label, the LA-based Sargent House, home to acts such as And So I Watch Your From Afar, Bosnian Rainbows, Tera Melos and Mylets.

"It’s a very supportive place, a place where artists can be themselves and develop. I’m grateful to have a musical home at Sargent House. They gave me the time and support I needed to get my shit together."

Aside from a nascent yet fruitful partnership with producer and bandmate Ben Chisholm, however, very little has changed when it comes to recording for Wolfe. Chisholm has been in Wolfe’s backing band for over three years, but he has only become Wolfe’s producing partner on the last couple of LPs. Wolfe typically writes alone but trusts Chisholm to assist her in bringing her compositions to life. Like many artists, however, Wolfe has matured with experience and has learned how to bring out the best in herself irrespective of the influence of others such as Chisholm and engineer Lars Stalfors. “I’ve learned to edit myself rather than releasing the first take,” she says. “But I also still go back to original version on certain sounds or vocals every once in a while because I feel that sometimes some special energy can be captured and just can’t be re-done.”

A woman of few words, Chelsea Wolfe was never going to be an overnight sensation, but she has developed into a beguiling artist that moves between tone and genre with ease and grace. Pain Is Beauty is quite a literal title rendering moments of shocking elegance from utter darkness both emotional and musical; we can only hope it makes Wolfe’s into more than a cult concern and inches her into that dreaded spotlight slightly more. And if not, she will remain vibrant in the shadows.

Story by George Morahan

Pain is Beauty is out now on Sargent House. Listen to it in full HERE

Photo above by Darla Teagarden with clothes & jewelry by Black Swan Theory and Bloodmilk

Rolling Stone have just premiered the title track to Russian Circles upcoming LP, “Memorial”. The track features Sargent House label-mate and European tour mate Chelsea Wolfe on Vocals.

Make sure to catch both bands when they tour through Europe in October & November together - both playing full headline length sets.

SEE ALL CHELSEA WOLFE TOUR DATES HERE

RUSSIAN CIRCLES, CHELSEA WOLFE – EU 2013 TOUR
Oct 12, 2013 – Prague, CZ @ Meet Factory
Oct 13, 2013 – Linz, AT @ Posthof
Oct 14, 2013 – Bologna, IT @ Locomotiv Club
Oct 15, 2013 – Zurich, CH @ Rote Fabrik
Oct 16, 2013 – Fribourg, CH @ Fri-son
Oct 18, 2013 – Barcelona, ES @ Apolo
Oct 19, 2013 – Madrid, ES @ Shoko Live
Oct 20, 2013 – Porto, PT @ Amplifest
Oct 21, 2013 – Bilbao, ES @ Kafe Antzokia
Oct 23, 2013 – Paris, FR @ Divan Du Monde
Oct 24, 2013 – Brighton, UK @ The Haunt
Oct 25, 2013 – Manchester, UK @ Gorilla
Oct 26, 2013 – Glasgow, UK @ SWG3
Oct 27, 2013 – Dublin, IRE @ Button Factory
Oct 29, 2013 – London, UK @ Electric Ballroom
Oct 30, 2013 – Gent, BE @ Vooruit
Oct 31, 2013 – Karlsruhe, DE @ Jubez
Nov 1, 2013 – Utrecht, NI @ Tivoli de Helling
Nov 2, 2013 – Koln, DE @ Stollwerck
Nov 3, 2013 – Hamburg, DE @ Club Logo
Nov 5, 2013 -  Stockholm, SE @ Debaser Strand
Nov 6, 2013 – Helsinki, FIN @ Tavastia
Nov 7, 2013 – Oslo, NO @ Bla
Nov 8, 2013 – Gothenburg, SE @ Truckstop Alaska
Nov 9, 2013 – Copenhagen, DK @ KB18
Nov 10, 2013 – Berlin, DE @ C- Club

It is an honor to have such an incredible musician cover this song. Mark Lanegan’s album Imitations comes out on September 17, 2013 this is his version of “Flatlands” above, song written by Chelsea Wolfe.

Chelsea Wolfe graces the cover of the October issue 261 of Rumore Magazine in Italy where she will be playing as part of her upcoming European tour with label mates Russian Circles - both bands will play full length headline sets with no opening bands for their run together in Europe.

SEE ALL CHELSEA WOLFE TOUR DETAILS HERE

CHELSEA WOLFE & RUSSIAN CIRCLES  – EU 2013 TOUR
Oct 12, 2013 – Prague, CZ @ Meet Factory
Oct 13, 2013 – Linz, AT @ Posthof
Oct 14, 2013 – Bologna, IT @ Locomotiv Club
Oct 15, 2013 – Zurich, CH @ Rote Fabrik
Oct 16, 2013 – Fribourg, CH @ Fri-son
Oct 18, 2013 – Barcelona, ES @ Apolo
Oct 19, 2013 – Madrid, ES @ Shoko Live
Oct 20, 2013 – Porto, PT @ Amplifest
Oct 21, 2013 – Bilbao, ES @ Kafe Antzokia
Oct 23, 2013 – Paris, FR @ Divan Du Monde
Oct 24, 2013 – Brighton, UK @ The Haunt
Oct 25, 2013 – Manchester, UK @ Gorilla
Oct 26, 2013 – Glasgow, UK @ SWG3
Oct 27, 2013 – Dublin, IRE @ Button Factory
Oct 29, 2013 – London, UK @ Electric Ballroom
Oct 30, 2013 – Gent, BE @ Vooruit
Oct 31, 2013 – Karlsruhe, DE @ Jubez
Nov 1, 2013 – Utrecht, NI @ Tivoli de Helling
Nov 2, 2013 – Koln, DE @ Stollwerck
Nov 3, 2013 – Hamburg, DE @ Club Logo
Nov 5, 2013 -  Stockholm, SE @ Debaser Strand
Nov 6, 2013 – Helsinki, FIN @ Tavastia
Nov 7, 2013 – Oslo, NO @ Bla
Nov 8, 2013 – Gothenburg, SE @ Truckstop Alaska
Nov 9, 2013 – Copenhagen, DK @ KB18
Nov 10, 2013 – Berlin, DE @ C- Club

** Also note that Russian Circles will play additional shows beyond the dates above without CW see ALL RUSSIAN CIRCLES SHOWS HERE

cover photo by Kristin Cofer

Sargent House presents: Russian Circles & Chelsea Wolfe on tour together in Europe. Each band will be playing full length sets both in support of their new albums “Memorial" and "Pain Is Beauty”. Above is a video of the silk screen poster process of the making of their European tour posters (available in limited numbers on tour only). Designed by Error Design with music by Russian Circles featuring Chelsea Wolfe on vocals from the album’s title track “Memorial”.

See All CHELSEA WOLFE SHOW DETAILS HERE


RUSSIAN CIRCLES, CHELSEA WOLFE — EU 2013 TOUR
Oct 12, 2013 — Prague, CZ @ Meet Factory
Oct 13, 2013 — Linz, AT @ Posthof
Oct 14, 2013 — Bologna, IT @ Locomotiv Club
Oct 15, 2013 — Zurich, CH @ Rote Fabrik
Oct 16, 2013 — Fribourg, CH @ Fri-son
Oct 18, 2013 — Barcelona, ES @ Apolo
Oct 19, 2013 — Madrid, ES @ Shoko Live
Oct 20, 2013 — Porto, PT @ Amplifest
Oct 21, 2013 — Bilbao, ES @ Kafe Antzokia
Oct 23, 2013 — Paris, FR @ Divan Du Monde
Oct 24, 2013 — Brighton, UK @ The Haunt
Oct 25, 2013 — Manchester, UK @ Gorilla
Oct 26, 2013 — Glasgow, UK @ SWG3
Oct 27, 2013 — Dublin, IRE @ Button Factory
Oct 29, 2013 — London, UK @ Electric Ballroom
Oct 30, 2013 — Gent, BE @ Vooruit
Oct 31, 2013 — Karlsruhe, DE @ Jubez
Nov 1, 2013 — Utrecht, NI @ Tivoli de Helling
Nov 2, 2013 — Koln, DE @ Stollwerck
Nov 3, 2013 — Hamburg, DE @ Club Logo
Nov 5, 2013 -  Stockholm, SE @ Debaser Strand
Nov 6, 2013 — Helsinki, FIN @ Tavastia
Nov 7, 2013 — Oslo, NO @ Bla
Nov 8, 2013 — Gothenburg, SE @ Truckstop Alaska
Nov 9, 2013 — Copenhagen, DK @ KB18
Nov 10, 2013 — Berlin, DE @ C- Club

RUSSIAN CIRCLES  ONLY
Nov 11, 2013 — Dresden, DE @ Beatpol
Nov 13, 2013 — Vienna, AT @ Szene
Nov 14, 2013 — Budapest, HU @ Durer Kert
Nov 15, 2013 — Belgrade, SR @ Club Fest
Nov 16, 2013 — Zagreb, HR @ Mochvara Club
Nov 17, 2013 — Munich, DE @ Feierwerk
Nov 19, 2013 — Moscow, RU @ B2
Nov 20, 2013 — St. Petersburg, RU @ Club Zal