Interview by Kris Peters
After a particularly turbulent period of their musical life, metal outfit Delain are set to release their latest album, the appropriately titled Dark Waters, on February 10.
While remaining Delain at its core due to the long standing influence of original member and keyboardist and main songwriter Martijn Westerholt, Dark Waters is also a coming of age for Delain, ushering in new members Diana Leah (vocals) and Ludovico Cioffi (bass) who have imparted their own magic from the outset.
Featuring a wide array of musical influences from pop to film score to blistering heavy metal, Dark Waters is both a statement and a coming of age which will set Delain further on the path to global acceptance.
Westerholt sat down with HEAVY to discuss the new music.
"I'm really looking forward to it," he enthused of the release. "Of course, I haven't been playing for quite some time. We did a few songs end of last year, but not real tours. So I am extremely looking forward to that. We're gonna do a European tour in April and May, and we're gonna do an American tour in September, and of course festivals. There's a lot of cool stuff coming."
We press Westerholt on the musical composition of Dark Waters.
"We had a really big split in the band a couple of years ago," he began, "so the question was there if Delain would continue. Fortunately some original band members returned and for me it was really important to capture the DNA of Delain with this record and I think that worked out well. We also had a guest musician returning who was present on three or four Delain albums already - that's Marko Hietala, the old singer of Nightwish and we had a guitar player who is in Within Temptation so we always have guests on our albums and this was the same. To me it was kind of going back to the roots a little bit with this album."
In the full interview, Martjin talks more about the overall sound of Dark Waters, the contributions of the new members and what they brought to the music, the seperation of the band and the challenges in continuing, the early days of Delain as a solo project and how it transformed into a full band, giving away complete creative control when welcoming in more members, the diversity in Delain's music and keeping it sounding balanced and more.