Skullcrusher Packs an Emotional Punch With Her 'Quiet' New Album

Judging by the formidable and doomy name, it would be natural to assume that Skullcrusher, which is the stage moniker of singer-songwriter Helen Ballentine, specializes in heavy metal or punk rock. But Skullcrusher's sound is not from either genre. Rather, the music is subdued and atmospheric indie folk rock—more in line with Nick Drake, Marissa Nadler and Phoebe Bridgers than the Misfits and Metallica.

"Initially, it came from this desire to be like, 'Hey, here I am. I know you might not think that I have much to say. But here I am,'" Ballentine tells Newsweek. "It's meant to be this statement coming from somebody who often feels a bit overlooked, feeling a little bit as this very small person who has a lot of anxiety and social anxiety. So I felt that this was a way to kind of push that a little bit, which has been difficult for me because it does work and it brings more attention to you for sure. But I think it's also been cool to be able to explain that to people."

Skullcrusher has certainly drawn positive attention from fans and music critics, beginning in 2020 with her self-titled EP, later followed by another mini-album, Storm in Summer, the next year. Last month, Skullcrusher put out her full-length debut record Quiet the Room via Secretly Canadian, and is currently on a tour of North America through early December to promote her new record before heading over to Europe for several dates in February.

Quiet the Room marks a musical progression from Skullcrusher's previous releases while retaining Ballentine's lovely singing voice, melodies and abstract lyrical sensibilities.

"I would say that sonically, it definitely pushes beyond what we were doing in the beginning," said Ballentine, who originally hails from Mount Vernon, New York. "The roots are still there. I think with this record I was a little bit freer in my songwriting, maybe less concerned about structure and trying to think about what is the song. Generally, the songwriting is still at its core, very similar to what I've been doing. But sonically and production-wise, we pushed it beyond."

The main theme of childhood complements the exquisite music on Quiet the Room. For most people, recollections of childhood tend to evoke innocence and nostalgia. And while that is true in the case of Quiet the Room, the record also conveys feelings of tension, anxiety and dissociation.

"It definitely feels conceptual to me," Ballentine says. "I tend to approach anything that I make—especially if you happen to be writing songs during a specific time of your life—there's often going to be continuity. So that definitely happened to this record, centering mainly around my childhood and more specifically the connection between my childhood, my present and my artistic practice, and how all of these things have influenced one another."

Ballentine conceived the record during the summer of 2021 around the time she was living in Los Angeles and thinking about her upbringing back in New York. Recording with musician Noah Weinman and producer Andrew Sarlo at a studio in upstate New York, Ballentine crafted an ethereal and translucent folk album featuring ambient influences and strings. She experienced tension in making the dreamy song "Whatever Fits Together," the first single from the album.

"It feels like a train to me sort of chugging along," Ballentine says of the track, "but there's also a force that it's like pushing through, and you can sense this kind of struggle happening. It's specifically looking back at my life and trying to imagine it in this very linear way that we tell our life stories. Especially doing interviews, people will ask you, 'What's your view? What's your story?' And you have to find the words to express that in a way that makes sense. I was remarking to myself that it's really impossible to do that in a way that makes sense if you're really gonna be honest about certain things."

The songs "They Quiet the Room" and "Quiet the Room" contain the same lyrics but are musically different from each other—the former is guitar-oriented and the latter features piano prominently—but they still convey a stark, haunting feeling.

"I really like the idea of a song having many different lives and iterations, and the fact that a song can sort of be constantly reborn as a different thing entirely. That particular choice also just kind of marks the beginning of the album. The piano version I wrote first and then put it aside for a while. And then when I knew I was making an album, I wanted to revisit it on a different instrument. So instead of going back to that piano, I picked up the guitar and decided to put those words to different chords."

The album's latest single, the atmospheric "It's Like a Secret," is a track that Ballentine considers very important to her—it was inspired by the process of writing a song.

"As I was working on the album and paying attention to how I was feeling and what was going on in my life at that time, and the realization that my creative practice is very tied to my emotional difficulties. It's kind of a weird relationship between the [process of writing a song and my day-to-day struggles as a person], and then how that comes through maybe to an outside viewer."

Quiet the Room covers a very heavy and emotional terrain, and Ballentine finds that writing and recording this music serves as a form of catharsis.

"Sometimes it really does feel like I have to be doing it. It's not even like I chose to do music. It feels like I have to be doing it, almost like it's something that's attached to my body because it does provide this necessary release and way of communicating things that are sometimes hard to put into words or sometimes you don't wanna put them into words and it gives you a way to release a lot of things."

Ballentine grew up musically, having first played piano and then later guitar; among the artists that she listened to included Nick Drake, the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Coldplay and Radiohead. But she didn't really consider music as a career by the time she moved to Los Angeles to study art and worked at a gallery until she decided to quit that job.

"I didn't want to be a salesperson and that was not comfortable for me. And then music was always something that I loved to do. I started to meet more people in L.A. who were pursuing music and making it work. I decided to get a part-time job and try doing it. It kind of made sense at that point."

While her sound isn't specifically hard rock, Skullcrusher's music nevertheless packs a punch, which may be why the moniker makes sense for Ballentine.

"Generally, it was sort of to contextualize what might otherwise be perceived as very soft, sweet, quiet music," she explains, "with something more aggressive because there is so much in intensity that is within me as a person and within this music, even if it's quiet."