Chelsea Wolfe "Pain Is Beauty"

2013's Pain Is Beauty may be Chelsea Wolfe's strongest album to date, and sees her work with a fuller backing band.

Chelsea Wolfe is often regarded as a queen of darkness or mistress of goth. "Pain Is Beauty" is her fourth album and proves that she's come a ways from where she first began. It splits the difference between Apokalypsis's rage and Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs' clarity. The sounds here are more tempered and even. There are lots of electronic touches, subtle or radical, and there are dance beats and spooky riffs. There are also elements of rock, tribal tones and ghostly, acoustic symphonies. It's an ethereal, eclectic mix of an album, and it's refreshing to hear Wolfe attempt so many things with her sound. 

1 Feral Love
2 We Hit a Wall
3 House of Metal
4 The Warden
5 Destruction Makes the World Burn Brighter
6 Sick
7 Kings
8 Reins
9 Ancestors, the Ancients
10 They'll Clap When You're Gone
11 The Waves Have Come
12 Lone