Charlotte Wessels: Wessels Rising
Dutch musician CHARLOTTE WESSELS might have got her start in symphonic metal, but over the past two years, she’s spent the time proving she has a far more eclectic songwriting palette. In early 2020, she launched her Patreon, a way for fans to support her with a monthly subscription at various tiers, with rewards corresponding to each; on that, she promised to write and release a song every single month. Initially, she only used material not set aside for her-then band, DELAIN. That meant that a year later, she’d gathered enough material to collate it together and release it to the wider world. That was Tales From Six Feet Under Volume I, so named after her basement home studio, Six Feet Under.
Another year on, CHARLOTTE WESSELS has firmly established a dedicated Patreon community and still creates a song every month for them, but she wasn’t initially sure about releasing a second collection of songs. “I didn’t know that I wanted to do that until pretty recently,” she tells us over Zoom from her studio. “I’ve been kind of on the fence about it for a while, but these two years have been such a strange and weird chapter for everyone, so I felt like doing volumes one and two would be good, for them to be part of this same story together.”
With Tales From Six Feet Under Vol II, she’s come somewhat full circle and is not only preparing to step back onstage, but she’ll be performing alongside her former bandmates. “Now that lockdown is over, I really want to perform for these people in person,” she says of the fans that have supported her, some for over two years now. That decision wasn’t as difficult as it first might’ve seemed; speaking to Distorted Sound last year, she admitted that the process of leaving her former band had been painful and she wasn’t yet prepared to step onstage with another band, in case it too ended.
Now? “I’m starting to notice when I see people onstage, I get this feeling of intense melancholia – because I want to be there too,” she admits. “I was still very much in touch with [her former bandmates who also left alongside her], having barbecues, meetups and all those things… and at one point, they said to me, we’d be really happy to play your songs.” The delight in her voice is obvious, that her friends were more than happy to support her dream of giving back to her community that have supported her for so long. So she’s playing a special set of these songs, all for the first time ever, in the Netherlands, at Tivoli Vredenburg near her home. “I’m very excited,” she confides.
As for the future – she’s similarly open to that as she was a Vol. II of Tales From Six Feet Under, but she knows it’ll remain broadly similar; the one song a month to Patreon will remain, but she’s discovered after her second year of working on this herself that, simply, sometimes she wants more time. “The song of the month is becoming a challenge… I wanted something that was more spontaneous, and unfiltered. But now, I don’t have a pile of songs from the last couple of years, because the ones that I really liked, I’ve already put out.” That means a slight shift in focus – but she’s still going to give one song every month, “but maybe a first version of the song,” she says, as she’s found a desire to keep working on some songs longer than the time she’s challenged herself to stick to for two years.
It doesn’t mean there won’t be some songs that become more spontaneous, nor does it mean CHARLOTTE WESSELS will stop taking a stand when she feels she needs to. In fact, she’s often used her song of the month, and indeed a subsequent album if it’s included, to make her voice heard, not just musically.” Toxic, from her new album, is a call to arms, a demand for women’s bodily autonomy against a sexist, patriarchal system that happened to coincide with the repeal of Roe v. Wade in America. “It existed before that,” she notes with a hint of sadness. “I wasn’t really hoping for more examples as to why I wanted to write that song to actually happen, but it’s terrifying,” and she knew she had to say something.
She does take heart from the number of people speaking out, “but I’d rather not have to sing about it,” she says before explaining that “I think if you have a platform, you have some sort of responsibility and accountability. If you say you don’t do politics, that’s fine, that’s your personal choice, but it is also a political choice. I’m always happy to see when people do [engage with these issues].”
This fire wasn’t lit under her because of one event; it’s something that’s deeply ingrained in her and something that will be spoken about in her music, those spontaneous monthly songs she writes not only for her fans, but for her own creative outlet. Music has become, more than ever, her entire world, and as she prepares to leave her basement to confront the rest of the world again on stage, she’s clearly taking solace and very happy to have friends by her side to do it and people that believe both in her and her creative vision.
Tales From Six Feet Under Vol II is out now via Napalm Records.
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