Spotlight Release Review | CS Hellmann Surfaces with Dark, Gritty Alt-Rock on ‘Waves Waves’
United States, Nashville
Some songs hit like a warning. Waves Waves by Nashville-based CS Hellmann doesn’t creep in gently. It lands with weight, snarling through the speakers in its first five seconds and never letting go. There’s a reason fans are drawing comparisons to Marilyn Manson, Trent Reznor and early Arctic Monkeys. This track sounds like it’s clawing its way out of a locked box.
Written as a kind of internal conflict between conscious wants and buried needs, Waves Waves is less a traditional single and more a psychological tug of war. The lyric “waves waves rolling on you, they’re rolling on me” loops through the track like a hypnotic chant, matched by gritty guitar layers and thunderous low-end drums. It’s unnerving, messy and all the more gripping for it.
Hellmann tracked most of the guitar parts in one take at Polychrome Ranch, a studio tucked into the East Tennessee hills. The result is ragged and alive, with every chord and solo holding a sense of real-time urgency. That rare mid-song guitar break feels less like a solo and more like a scream, jagged and absolutely earned.
Vocally, Hellmann leans into a breathy, menacing tone, staying low and close to the mic. There’s a haunted quality to the delivery that pulls the listener in without offering resolution. The production doesn’t clean anything up, either. This isn’t polished alt-rock. It’s swampy, brooding, and deliberately uncomfortable in the best way.
This is a track for fans of the murky in-between. If you like your indie laced with noise and your riffs coated in smoke, Waves Waves might just be your next fixation.
