September 27, 2025 – Kimmel is not your typical metal den. It’s wood, marble, balconies, refined acoustic curves. You expect chamber music or classical recitals there, not drum-driven rune magic. That tension between a “prestige” theater and primal aural assault was the secret electric current of the night.
Photos by Keith Baker ( @average_joe_photo ) + Article by @a.j.kinney
Chelsea Wolfe: twilight / drone / doom folk in a gilded cage
Chelsea Wolfe hit stage firs. Her stage presence is slow, ritualistic, not screaming, not press-your-face, but pulling you inward, like cold water. In that ornate hall, her voice, her reverb, the strings, the drones they wrapped around the balconies, choking the air in the best way.
She opened with “The Mother Road” and built through “Birth of Violence” and “Tunnel Lights,” ebbing and cresting. The lights were minimal, faint backlight, shadows, occasional strobes. There was a moment in “Cold” when her voice cracked through silence like a blade. The hush of the hall swallowed the quiet parts, released the intense parts. I remember thinking: this is a metal show by proxy, these songs have the same emotional torque and heartbreak as any black or doom track, just sampled in the minor chords and haunting reverb.
She played “Be All Things” deeper in the set, a song that feels like a requiem and a fight at once, and closed strong with “Feral Love,” dragging us through that liminal space between beauty and ruin.
What struck me: for a metal head, she feels like a bridge. She doesn’t need distortion. The emotional density, the dramatic arcs, the gloom, all those are in her DNA. You could sit in a church with those songs and feel the same kind of worship. But here, in Kimmel, they feel like prayers to old, forgotten gods.
Wardruna: rune forged thunder in a cathedral
Wardruna’s presence, it’s theatrical in everything: gnomic vocals, frame drums, birchwood flutes, goatskin drums, candlelight, smoke. They bring ancestral ritual with them. For a metal head, this is as close as you get to mythic black metal without distortion.
They began slow, whisper-drums in the shadows. Then the frame drums growled. The wood flutes cut high, like wails across dark water. The lights dimmed to amber and ember. Smoke curled around the stage like ancestral breath. A moment in “Skugge” (shadow) felt like the ceiling itself opened, a portal. In “Vindavlarljod” (song of the wind-roars) the drums pounded like storms passing through stone halls.
They also played “Voluspá”, that song of prophecy, of twilight and decay. When they hit that, the hall moaned. You could feel every wooden board resonate. The audience stopped being spectators, we were participants in ritual. At times the stage went nearly dark, and the voices; male, female, group, echoed against walls and seats, sometimes weaving in overlapping chant. The acoustics of Kimmel made the low frequencies hum in your ribs; the trebles cut your scalp. Their use of space. silence between notes, voices placed, drums off in corners, it was part of the theater.
Between songs, there were pauses, not banter, but silence or whispered invocation, letting the weight of their lore settle. I watched heads tilt, eyes close. I felt my own pulse map to theirs. It’s a rare thing: to feel small and gigantic at once.
As they receded, shadow by shadow, descending into silence. I half expected a rune carved in flame above the stage as we sat stunned.
Reflections from the trenches
Walking home I felt simultaneously exhausted and electric. What struck me hardest: seeing material that lives in the underground; drones, folk-metal, experimental, transplanted into a space like Kimmel, and succeeding on its own terms.
A longtime metal head will typically hunger for distortion, breakdowns, blast beats. But nights like this show you how broad the beast is. The DNA is in emotional extremity, quiet brutality, ritual, atmosphere. Wolfe and Wardruna share that root, though they branch different directions. Together, they made Kimmel feel like a hidden longhouse, not a theater.
Also: the crowd was a curious mix of metalheads, goths, folk-listeners, theater patrons. You saw people in black tees, people in nicer dress, all converging. And in those moments when a drum or vocal hit so deep it made your spine shiver, the divides melted.
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