DELAIN Singer Says New Album 'Goes In A Lot Of Directions'

Radio Metal recently conducted an interview with singer Charlotte Wessels of Dutch symphonic metallers DELAIN. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Radio Metal: Your guitar player, Timo Somers, will not join you on this tour. He will be replaced by current DORO and former AFTER FOREVER guitarist Bas Maas. What brought about this situation?

Charlotte: Timo is really busy with a lot of musical projects. When he auditioned for the position of guitarist for DELAIN, we already knew that music was really in his blood. He has so many projects going on, and he was really busy. We were wondering how we could think of a solution that would provide everybody space. We were actually thinking about having two guitarists joining us when Bas Maas came along. There were enthusiastic about the possibility of filling the job together. It's not really a thing that you would automatically go for, but when we saw the option of having these two very talented guitarists who were willing to take the responsibility, we thought it might be a very good idea. We're curious to see how it turns out and to have Bas on stage with us for the first time.

Radio Metal: Unfortunately, we haven't heard the [new DELAIN] album ["We Are The Others"] yet, but there were a couple of extracts in various videos you posted on line, especially in the tour trailer. These tracks sound particularly heavy, and some of the titles are quite aggressive: "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", "Where Is The Blood", etc. Does this album mark a change of direction for DELAIN?

Charlotte: These questions are very difficult to answer for me. Usually, it's more the public than ourselves that decides whether or not it's going in a certain direction. What I can say is that, lyrically, I've been trying not to avoid anything, like aggressive things or lyrics that I would normally think should be a bit more subtle. I've been looking for the limits, like: "How far can you express yourself without crossing certain borders?" Musically, you mentioned it was quite heavy. I think it has to do with… I mean, there are very different songs on the record. Some songs are actually much more poppy, and others are more heavy. It really goes in a lot of directions. But I feel that it does portray one identity. I think we also owe that to Tripod, our production team, and Jacob Hellner, who's worked with RAMMSTEIN and APOCALYPTICA. He's worked very much with the band, on just the groove of the band. When you listen to this album, there's a little less orchestration going on. It's a little bit more straightforward, with drums and guitars, more in your face. This is what I really like about it, and what I think makes even the poppier songs still more intense, in a way. Everything is real and right there.

Radio Metal: The change seems to be very important — compared to "Lucidity", at least, perhaps not to "April Rain"…

Charlotte: I can imagine. In a band, you feel like you naturally evolve to a certain state, because there are years that you just spend writing songs. Of course, the audience doesn't see the whole process. They see one spot of the process, which is called "Lucidity", one spot called "April Rain", and then "We Are The Others". They don't get to know what happened in between, and how some choices don't come from a sudden desire to do something else, but were naturally created.

Radio Metal: "We Are The Others" is DELAIN's third studio album. It was probably too early before to talk about a live album, but are you starting to think about it now?

Charlotte: (long pause) It's not the first thing on my mind. We've recorded some live tracks and mixed them properly, so we've actually got some decent quality live songs ready. Maybe one day we'll do it, and of course, it will be great to have it. But I just really like to create new music more. These days, you can see every live gig on YouTube. I can imagine it would be nice to have something, because I like listening to live tracks of other bands, but to me, it's not the most exciting thing. I'm more thinking about album number four already!

Read the entire interview from Radio Metal.

"Get The Devil Out Of Me" video:

Interview:

Photo credit: Sandra Ludewig