Charlotte Wessels

A lot has changed for Charlotte Wessels since we last caught up with the Dutch vocalist at the O2 Ritz Manchester in 2019. It was the release date for the artist’s final album with Delain ‘Apocolypse and Chill’ and also the start of the band’s UK tour.

However, in 2021 Wessels and most of her Delain counterparts left the band for pastures new, leaving only keyboard player Martijn Westerholt. An unexpected and somewhat unpleasant surprise for Delain fans but understandable under the circumstances.

Fast forward to the present time, and Charlotte Wessels has been pushing forward with her solo career. A venture which has been catalysed by the artist embracing the online platform Patreon. Since she departed from Delain, Charlotte has amassed a huge collection of songs, which have been released via a pair of albums titled Tales From Six Feet Under Vol I and Vol II. At the time of writing the artist was preparing to perform her solo material live for the first time in her homeland of the Netherlands.

Speaking about the release show Charlotte said: “It feels like a milestone. I’ve been in the basement for two years, and I’ve got two albums worth of songs and then some - that have never been played for an audience before.” She adds: “The last stage that I played before the pandemic hit was with Delain, and a couple of guys from Delain are joining me on stage as well. So, it’s going to be a very special moment.”

Utilising Patreon as a platform to release music has given the artist a new sense of freedom. “It’s been very rewarding. It’s basically the only reason that I’ve been able to do what I’ve been doing for the past two years. It has funded all the projects that I’ve done over the last couple of years. I am working with Napalm Records again, but I haven’t had to ask for any advances or anything because I was able to fund the videos, the mixes, the masters, and everything myself which gives you a sense of freedom and independence that is wonderful,” said Wessels.

Patreon not only gave Charlotte independence but following her departure from Delain it also immediately gave the versatile songwriter both direction and a creative outlet to release music. “I’m glad that I had Patreon before the band split,” said Charlotte. “If at that point I’d had to think of okay, what am I going to do now? I wouldn’t have been in the mindset to go and set up something entirely new. So yeah, it’s been a great support system in all ways possible.”

As somewhat of a prolific songwriter, the Dutch artist already had a lot of material looking for a home when she joined the popular online platform. “The whole reason why I started Patreon in the first place is that I wrote a lot of music, and not all of that was going to be on a Delain record because it was different,” said Charlotte. “I knew that if I didn’t do anything, those would just get dusty on a hard drive somewhere.”

Of course, a lot of artists suffered from writer’s block during the lockdown period. Being confined within your own four walls limited opportunities for inspiration. However, this was something that the former Delain lead vocalist didn’t have any issues overcoming. “There was a source of things that I could pull from if I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired,” said Charlotte. “It was also a weird time in life, that you’re not going out and you’re not doing the things you would normally get inspiration from. But, for me, I was closing this massive chapter in my life and going through all these phases of, if not for this, then who or what even am I? And that is something that you can write about as well. It’s not fun, but inspiration. So, I didn’t really have like a blockage in that sense.”

Patreon has given the artist the freedom to push the boundaries of her creativity into areas that are outside of her symphonic metal origins. “Usually, when I have to start working on the song of the month, I’ll either have an idea or I will go through my old ideas, and I will be like, what do I feel like doing? And since I am at the moment not working on a record that it has to fit on, I just let every song go where I think it is to go.”

Beyond the unveiling of her new album Tales From Six Feet Under Vol II and the record’s official release show, Charlotte Wessels is open-minded concerning further touring. “I’ve given myself permission to not plan the shows until I’ve done the first show. But I think that looking at what am I going to do live and where am I going to go - that is one of the first things that I’ll do after we do the Tivoli release show,” said Charlotte. Moving forward, the artist concludes: “I do want to work on an album ...not necessarily a compilation, but more of a cohesive thing. So that’s also something that I’d love to work on.”

Tales From Six Feet Under Vol II, the new album from Charlotte Wessels, is out now via Napalm Records.