Charlotte Wessels On Departure from Delain: “I Don’t Feel Like There Was Really Another Option”
Dutch symphonic metal band Delain went through a huge shake up in 2021 when 4/5 of the band suddenly quit, leaving Delain as the solo project of keyboardist and songwriter Martijn Westerholt. Usually when that many people quit a band at the same time, that’s a pretty good sign that something went terribly wrong, or, in the recent case of As I Lay Dying, it’s a sign that everyone just realized the ridiculous mistake they made by joining the band in the first place. But, since Delain wasn’t centered around a. murderous piece of shit like AILD, their sudden collapse was a bit of a mystery to a lot of people in the metal world. Former frontwoman Charlotte Wessels is now offering a little bit of an explanation, but a lot more questions remain.
In a recent interview with Scott Penfold of The Loaded Radio Podcast (that was transcribed by Blabbermouth), Wessels talked a little bit about her departure, saying:
“There was a conflict and we couldn’t overcome it. That’s a very short version of it. I’ve never really gone into detail about it, and I still don’t really feel about going into detail about it. The thing that I will say is we spent a lot of time trying to work things out. We were already putting much energy in that before we kind of got to the conflict where it was hard to come back from. But, yeah, especially since the pandemic happened, we had no gigs. We had all the time in the world to think, like, ‘Okay, what are we going to do? Will we be able to solve this?’ And we took a very long time. And in the end, the answer was no. There was no solution that we could find where we would continue in that way. And a part of me — it’s such a big part of my life, and I’m very happy, I’m very proud with what we did in that time. So it’s frustrating to me that we couldn’t work it out. The thing that kind of comforts me is the fact that we did take so much time to explore all the different possibilities, like, could we make this work? Yeah, I don’t feel like there was really another option. So that’s why.”
Wessels was later asked if she kept in touch with Westerholt, and Wessels responded:
“I ran into him at one point, but there’s been no contact otherwise. And I think right after it, there’s been some contact here and there, but that was about it.”
It seems that both Delain and Wessels have managed to land their feet. Delain’s 2023 album Dark Waters was fairly well received, and Wessels’ new solo album The Obsession is getting rave reviews. But it’s always sad to see these relationships fall apart.
