What would you do if everything you’d worked on suddenly turned to rubble? Delain mastermind Martijn Westerholt pulled his musical boots on and built a new future…
One morning in February 2021, Martijn Westerholt awoke to find himself in darkness. It was light enough outside – this was darkness of an internal kind. After 15 years and six albums, all fronted by the mesmerising Charlotte Wessels and featuring in recent years a stable line-up, Martijn – the band’s founder and keyboard player – was, quite abruptly, completely alone.
Due to a variety of differing aims, the band members had opted to go their separate ways. Most fans understandably leapt to the conclusion that it was all over. Delain, a Dutch band with a major international following, had made a point of touring ‘properly’ whenever possible and had always appeared to be ecstatic in one another’s company. They were a delight to watch. Emotional, tempestuous music, beautifully sung and powerfully played by people with smiles on their faces – their sudden demise came as a ground-shaking shock.
“People are happy onstage, but even happy people can argue,” Martijn wryly observes. “It had been triggered by our previous success – I am responsible for plugging the holes when there are problems, but with so much going on, I’d suffered a burnout. The question was how to proceed, and the guys had a completely different idea about that. I wanted things to stay much the same, but with a little less touring. The three guys in the band saw things differently to me and we couldn’t figure it out.”
The pandemic then brought Delain – and everything else – to a shuddering halt, but the enforced downtime still didn’t provide a resolution. “Charlotte’s view was that if the four of us guys couldn’t work things out, then she wanted to leave and do her own music. So, everything collapsed.”
If you’re a creative, then in hard times your primal instinct is to carry on creating. Or as Winston Churchill put it, ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going.’ To the surprise of some, Martijn resolved to continue flying the Delain flag, to assemble a new line-up both to keep the old music alive and to start afresh. But clearly, to keep the fanbase on board, the chemistry had to be right.
“For me, there was one condition: could I assemble another line-up with enough Delain DNA present? And the thing is, not everyone left. Former band members [guitarist Ronald Landa and drummer Sander Zoer] returned and the writing team that I work with [songwriter Guus Eikens and lyricist Robin La Joy, Martijn’s wife] were still around. At first I thought it would just be a ‘project’, which is how Delain started, but then those former band members asked if we could continue as a full band – so here we are.”
The hardest thing, inevitably, would be to find a new singer. As the voice of Delain, Charlotte was going to be a tough act to follow. Among many other things, she was the public face behind Delain’s seminal hit We Are The Others, a song addressing the 2007 murder of Sophie Lancaster that’s gone on to be embraced as an anti-hate crime anthem.
Martijn managed to remain open-minded on this somewhat galactic challenge, even considering male vocalists, but in the end he’s clearly made the right choice. Romanian-born Italian singer Diana Leah sounds eerily like her predecessor, and as vehement as Martijn is that this was not a priority, from a fan’s viewpoint it’s huge. It not only means that Delain can continue to perform their occasionally symphonic-hued melodic metal in the way it’s supposed to be, but it also means that in new album Dark Waters the band have delivered an album worthy of its name. It’s a true comeback.
“It was such a surreal moment for me,” Diana says of joining the band. “I’d been busy with my other projects and I had actually stopped singing for a while. I’d done some vocal covers on YouTube in the past but I didn’t really think things were going anywhere – and then I saw the news about Delain on Instagram. I thought to myself, ‘Is this a sign from the universe?’
“Eventually, I realised that it was. I felt a bit insecure because I didn’t have much experience of being in a band. I ignored all the voices in my head and went for it. I left a comment, asking them if I could audition. I didn’t expect anything back, but Martijn got back to me two days later and said that I was already on his list of people to contact – it turned out he knew all about my YouTube channel!”
Shortly after, an excited Diana flew to the Netherlands to meet the band for the first time. “I got together with Martijn, Ronald and Sander – we had dinner and played some songs acoustically. It was fun, and important to find out that we could get along on a human level, because that’s so key to being in a band. I flew back home, and about a week later Martijn called, saying they really liked my voice and my personality, and that was it!”
Like anyone entering a new situation, Diana is full of trepidation, but she’s determined to put all that nervous energy to positive use. “Going into a band where you’re replacing a singer that people know, there are obviously going to be expectations and comparisons,” she considers. “You need to brace yourself and stay focused on what you do, rather than on what people are saying. There are always gonna be mean people online, but you get used to that. There are also many – and far more – lovely, supportive people. It is scary to perform live in front of an audience who are used to seeing a different vocalist singing those songs, but in life you either let fear hold you back and have regrets, or you just go ahead and do it – scared or otherwise!”
Speaking on the writing process for Dark Waters, Martijn says it was "business as usual", and that while the lyrics aren't written by him, some are inspired by his experiences.
"We have a song like Invictus, which is like a mini-opera and is not written like a regular Delain song. While it was also inspired to some degree by what has happened in our past, it is dramatised and not at all real.
“We have [former Nightwish singer/bassist] Marko Hietala guesting on that track. Both of us went through a very difficult period. My world was crumbling at the same time he was in the process of leaving Nightwish. He’d actually put out a statement telling [prospective collaborators] not to contact him unless they happened to be Tony Iommi, so I was really honoured that he agreed to work with us. I arrived at his house in Spain and recorded his vocals in just one hour – although I ended up staying the whole weekend!”
Delain made a live return in their homeland last year, but the first dates in support of Dark Waters begin in April, and include two UK shows. Martijn is almost apologetic that there aren’t more, and promises a full UK tour for 2024, plus U.S. dates this September.
Unsurprisingly, he describes the band’s first shows in the Netherlands as ‘emotional’.
“We had two ‘try-out’ shows for which we just invited fans in – they were free to attend. The old songs came back to life, and there were a lot of people crying, in a good way. I’ll never forget it. Our first ‘proper’ show was at a festival [Riverside Open Air] in Switzerland, and we had to come on after Status Quo, at about 11pm. I thought it was an interesting debut for Diana!
“When we come to the UK, it’s gonna be a mixture of old and new. We will be playing most of the new album, plus old favourites, and we’ll also be involving the fans, asking them what they’d like to hear. Delain has a very loyal, dedicated fanbase and I am so grateful that they kept an open mind and actually gave us another chance, and listened to our new music. This new album sounds and feels like Delain, and I am filled with happiness and gratitude that the vast majority of people are still with us.”
To the credit of its creators, and in the face of significant odds, Dark Waters is an album that sits comfortably in the Delain canon. Reflecting what Martijn has personally been through, songs like Mirror Of Night and Tainted Hearts (featuring lyrics written by both Diana and Robin) address coming back from hard times, weighted with sadness but ploughing forward with renewed insight. And isn’t that the best thing about waking up in darkness? It’s always followed by light…
Dark Waters is out now and is available to stream, download and order physically.
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