Beyond the Boys’ Club is a monthly column focusing on women in rock and metal music, as they offer their perspectives on the music industry and discuss their personal experiences. Journalist, radio host and musician Anne Erickson of Audio Ink Radio and the music outfit Upon Wings, writes the column. This month’s piece features an interview with singer Charlotte Wessels, formerly of Delain.
Charlotte Wessels is known for her time fronting the Dutch symphonic metal band Delain, but she is now carving out a solo career with her recently released album The Obsession (available here).
The LP features Wessels working with fellow ex-Delain members Timo Somers (guitars, additional arrangements), Otto Schimmelpenninck van der Oije (bass), and Joey Marin de Boer (drums), along with Sophia Vernikov (piano/Hammond organ).
The songs brim with her passionate vocals amid huge guitars and grandiose atmospheres. Among the standout tracks are “Dopamine” (featuring Simone Simons) and “Ode to the West Wind” (featuring Alissa White-Gluz).
In support of the album, Wessels will embark on a UK/European tour in November.
Wessels spoke with Heavy Consequence for the latest Beyond the Boys’ Club column, discussing her rise on the Patreon platform, her songwriting process, the new album, her experience as a women in the music industry, and more.
Congratulations on your new album, The Obsession. What sets this album apart from your previous solo material?
It’s very different, but it started in a similar way, in that it started with previous records. I put a new song on Patreon every month, so my first solo albums were compilations of me doing that. My first and second years, I put out a number of songs and didn’t intend for those songs to be on a record together when I wrote them, but then, I thought, I didn’t want to be an artist that had all my music behind a paywall. So, I put out compilations of those songs that I released on Patreon. It was all me in the basement, writing and recording.
For The Obsession, it started a similar way. I started writing songs in the basement and recorded and programmed the parts and put them on my Patreon. That’s where the process started. After a year of exploring different genres and teaching myself production, I wanted to work on a traditional album and writing songs with musicians instead of plugins. So, I started writing the songs and putting them on Patreon, and when I thought I had enough tracks to fill the album, the next phase began, and I started to rearrange the tracks for the band recordings.