“Music Is Culture.”
It was another night of firsts for me. My first time shooting at the Greek Theater in the hills of East Hollywood, my first time seeing both Chelsea Wolfe and Wardruna, and I sure picked an interesting night for it. Thankfully, the temperature had dropped over the past couple of days so at least we wouldn’t be sweating it out with the sun down. The Greek is a seasoned and slick venue, boasting a damn good sound system. With the weather being nice and the wind nearly nonexistent, which is a rarity in outdoor music venues, it was a great experience.
Chelsea Wolfe has been an artist I’ve been wanting to see perform live ever since the release of Hiss Spun in 2017, but for whatever myriad of reasons, I’ve been thwarted time and time again. She played a stripped-down arrangement of songs, mostly from last year’s She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, with notable songs from her extensive collection. It led to a much more intimate feeling performance, in spite of the size of the venue, and I noticed how viscerally her fans experience her songs, passionately, albeit quietly, singing along and gesturing with extreme emotional attachment. She has such a beautiful voice, it’s easy to be swept up in it, and considering the tone to follow, she quite gracefully built the mood.
I’m incredibly new to neopagan folk music, or as some in the metal community like to call it: Folk Metal. My only experiences were what friends exposed me to; Myrkur’s Folkesange and Heilung’s Lifa were the main two. Wardruna came to me a little bit later, but I was quite intrigued nonetheless. While the previously mentioned artists wear a little bit of their metal past/present influences on their sleeves, Wardruna firmly focuses on the traditional aspect of their musicality. The plethora of classic instruments they brought, along with their incredible skill, was mesmerizing.
Throughout the night, the band let the songs and performance speak for themselves, sweeping us up and enveloping us in a beautiful wall of sound. Einar Selvik’s powerful and sometimes snarling leads, punctuated by Lindy-Fay Hella’s powerful octave harmony, are something that truly deserves to be experienced in the live setting. Their songs already have a very cinematic quality to them, but live, it’s like being transported through time and space to a more ancient era.
Selvik waited until the encore to speak to the audience about the importance of song and how it creates community and culture. The simple act of singing can be both defiant and penitent. We sing for joy, sadness, anger, life, and even death, which segued into “Helvegen,” perhaps their most widely known song. The true closer of the night, however, was a lullaby, which he noted makes up a large majority of songs in the human lexicon. This one, however, was written from the perspective of a bear, and Selvik performed it alone on stage with his kravik-lyre.
