When people talk about Chelsea Wolfe, they'll often mention that the Los Angeles musician covered the controversial Norwegian black metal artist Burzum's "Black Spell of Destruction" a few years ago, and that though she plays folk music she counts plenty of metalheads among her fans, including Sunn O)))'s Stephen O'Malley, who regularly retweets her "Grow old and let your hair grow" adage. That line, about sticking to your given path as a lifer, shows up on Wolfe's fifth full-length, Abyss, during the smeary, intense late-album standout "Color of Blood", and it's a fitting sentiment for her heaviest (and best) collection to date.

Wolfe has incorporated metallic elements into her music since the beginning—especially on 2013's Pain Is Beauty—but she's never really gone full-on metal. And, honestly, she still hasn't, but on Abyss she comes closer than ever, externalizing those tendencies. She's thrown in moments of distortion, animal-like growling, or hiss on her other records, but it could come off like an affectation or add-on; here, it's built into, and integral to, the music, which frequently booms with distorted doom-metal guitar.

Recorded in Dallas by John Congleton, Abyss features Wolfe's longtime collaborator, multi-instrumentalist and co-writer Ben Chisholm, plus regular drummer Dylan Fujioka and viola player Ezra Buchla. The real difference is Mike Sullivan, guitarist for mostly instrumental Chicago post-rock band, Russian Circles. Wolfe sang on the sole vocal track on Russian Circles' excellent 2013 album, Memorial; he returns the favor here, adding an anthemic dimension to a handful of the tracks that you won't find in her other work. Overall, this is the first time you feel like the music consistently lives up to the power of her voice.

The other big difference: She previously produced her albums with Chisholm, and they've done a fine job, but Congleton makes everything sound so much bigger. The production is ambitious—in the past, it could sometimes come off as a bit ill-fitting or unnatural. On Abyss, the sound is fully realized, her voice always at home. Congleton is a prolific producer, who's worked with the likes of Swans, Angel Olsen, Explosions in the Sky, and St. Vincent. If you focus on that small sampling, you'll have an idea of what Wolfe sounds like on here: The songs don't wait around, or take time to build—they are immediately full on, and never stop raging. Wolfe's early work felt solitary, like it was made, and meant to be listened to, alone. The music here is expansive, and teeming, and you can easily imagine it on a large stage, with a crowd singing along.

The songs are long and dynamic, pushing their boundaries to the limit while maintaining spaciousness. "Survive", which opens with a bluesier feel, sprouts Swans-like tribal drums, ghostly and vicious feedback, a super-heavy Mudhoney bass, and a forceful bit of noise that comes off like a football stadium full of cheering zombies. The gorgeous "Iron Moon" was inspired by a Chinese factory worker, and poet, who killed himself because of the monotony of his daily grind and a failed relationship: It explodes in a way that didn't seem possible for Wolfe previously. "Dragged Out", a proper doom track that comes off like a more interesting Windhand, folds in noise, a tolling bell, haunted ghost howls and squeals.

She's said these songs were inspired by sleep paralysis, something she's dealt with her entire life. It's a condition where you want to wake up but can't, and when you finally do, you can't move, and there are a number of lyrics about the different sides of sleep ("In sleep there is no sorrow," "When I dream it steals my wonder," "I’ve been waiting/ In this silence/ While you’re sleeping") and being unable to escape from it ("I’m screaming/ But I can’t wake up," "Set me free from my slumber," "Chasing the sun/ I can’t wake up"). Abyss is night music. As Wolfe put it, "Abyss is meant to have the feeling of when you’re dreaming, and you briefly wake up, but then fall back asleep into the same dream, diving quickly into your own subconscious."

The previously mentioned "Color of Blood" is not that far off from early Zola Jesus, and it's interesting to see that, where Nika Roza Danilova has downplayed her goth tendencies on her more recent, big-pop albums, Wolfe has found a way to remain backed by candelabra and decked in minimalist corpse paint and still locate pop melody alongside the bombast. The sultry ballad "Simple Death" is dark, but it's also gorgeous and catchy: Wolfe is not simply going heavier for heavier's sake, she's mastering her craft, writing songs that you remember immediately, and that you'll find yourself humming now and then. The bigger sound is what the source material, her sleep/dream issues, needed. Which brings to mind that line about letting your hair grow as you get old, of not changing your course. We're all frail and imperfect, and that's fine. But instead of inventing a persona or finding an easier way, Wolfe went deep into herself, doubled down on the horrors of life, and came back with a bleak, beautiful masterpiece—she kept going, especially when it started to hurt.