Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Country: USA
Genre: Alternative metal
Full length: Empty on the Inside
Format: Digital, vinyl (see links for more information)
Label: Metal Blade
Release date: October 23, 2026
We’ve heard about bands who write about embracing your darkness without it defining you, or it being defined by others, Repeated listens reveal new nuances in the darkness Chaney Crabb embraces in her lyrics and varied vocal styles. Paired with Entheos’ layered songwriting, it makes “Empty on the Inside” that much more immersive and compelling.
Crabb has been a founding member of Entheos since the band’s inception in 2015, and in 2021 she joined the cast of the interactive horror video game series Dead by Daylight, alongside actors Brad Dourif, Bruce Campbell, and Doug Bradley, and vocalists Riley McShane (formerly of Allegaeon), Adrienne Cowan (Seven Spires, Avantasia), and Sébastien Croteau (Necrotic Mutation). The role challenged Crabb to use sudden, erratic vocal techniques, adjusting her larynx and placement in uncommon ways. This not only built her stamina but improved her performance as a frontwoman.
Alongside multi-instrumentalist Navene Koperweis (formerly of Animals as Leaders and Animosity), Scott Carstairs (Fallujah), and Michael Stancel (Allegaeon), the band would sign with Metal Blade soon after, showcasing their individual growth and progress as a band on ”Time Will Take Us All” (2023) and “Empty on the Inside” (2026).
The former album, written and composed by Crabb and Koperweis, was crafted to intertwine raw emotion, technical prowess and musicianship that shifts from section to section in an instant. Its blend of technical death metal, deathcore, synthwave, prog rock, and jazz fusion maintains fluid harmonic continuity and consistent underlying progressions (even the death metal and deathcore elements have an inherent progressive feel). The bass and drums move in tandem with the guitars, creating song structure that challenges Crabb to keep the pace. By breathing strategically, she enunciates clearly and matches her phrasing to the riffs and time changes with apparent ease, especially when she shifts between multiple vocal styles.
Expanding from a two-member collaboration into a full-band effort, “Empty on the Inside” strengthens the genre-crossing elements, with each contributing more to the whole. The guitars handle the transitions more smoothly. The integration of death metal with jazz fusion, and the integration of ambient and electronic sounds with deathcore, are channeled directly into the songs’ framework, not as embellishments but as a common starting point.
Moving beyond the usual deathcore formula, Crabb embraces an emotionally dynamic vocal approach, making an effort to increase its accessibility. Drawing on the “screaming” of nu-metal singers, she often employs a mid-phrase shift from singing to rasping to screaming while staying connected to the feeling her lyrics evoke. Crabb also knows where to transition from softness to encompassing tension, according to how a lyric needs to be conveyed.
In writing about embracing one’s own darkness, she invites the void further inward rather than resisting it, finding a certain strength in the surrender, turning it toward an unyielding resilience rather than pretending to be okay. The horrific soundscapes provided by the instruments, the dissolution of genre boundaries and the cinematic use of horror to convey realism is another step forward for metal as it transforms its subject matter into a horror-survival experience. –Dave Wolff
Lineup:
Chaney Crabb: Vocals, lyrics
Navene Koperweis: Drums, guitar, synth
Michael Stancel: Guitar, synth
Scott Carstairs: Guitar
Track list:
1. Hell Is a Part of Me
2. Empty on the Inside
3. Hollow
4. Call My Name
5. Golden Crown
6. Undone
7. Tomblight (feat. Michael Lessard)
8. Pale Faith
9. Never Let Me Go
10. The Earth Will Move
