Formed in 2006, Valentine Wolfe is the combined effort of the Lady Sarah Black and Braxton Ballew. Imagine Sarah Brightman being backed by Francois Rabbath blowing through a Marshall stack at midnight. Having dubbed their music "Victorian Chamber metal", the duo have synthesized a love of metal, classical, and industrial, infusing them with a Victorian sensibility that evokes the likes of Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe.
Ethereal soprano vocals of Sarah Black are buttressed by the thunderous growl of Braxton's electric upright bass, the two coalescing over pounding rock and electronic grooves punctuated by a maelstrom of synthesizers, keyboards, and sound design. Their work has attracted the attention of rock audiences, goth enthusiasts, theatre composers, and con attendees all up and down the east coast.
Their latest release, The Nightingale: A Gothic Fairytale, behind which they are currently touring, is a dramatic adaptation and reinterpretation of both The Emperor and the Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen and Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats, set in a sinister Poison Garden, based on the Alnwick Botanical Gardens in England, where every single plant can kill.