Delain at this point in their career have arguably joined the fine ranks of legendary Dutch symphonic metal. It’s taken a little while to get there, but there has been no stumbling block in their existence, only music that has refined like matured like a good wine. Now comes ‘Moonbathers‘, that has already promised some of the band’s strongest material to date. We chat with keyboardist and composer Martijn Westerholt to explain what makes the Delain machine tick when it comes to making music.
Now sitting alongside Within Temptation and Epica, Delain are slowly but surely solidifying their status as legends of Dutch metal. ‘Moonbathers‘ might just be the record to do that – but we ask Martijn just how the album is going to do that, and what keeps the bust Delain machine so well oiled that they have only seen an exponential rise in the last 10 years?
Listen to the unedited interview or read the full transcript below!
Delain’s new album ‘Moonbathers’ is released August 26th via Napalm Records. You can order it here now!
Hello Martijn, how are you?
I’m fine! How are you?
I’m very well thank you! Thank you so much for speaking to us today, really appreciate it!
No problem. My pleasure.
So I guess new Delain music is the hot topic. You released ‘Lunar Prelude’ a couple months ago, and that sort of indicated to us that the new album was going to be something about the moon…
[laughs]…and you were right!
Yes! We found the new album title to be ‘Moonbathers’. What we were interested in is why the topic of the moon? Is it some sort of theme with what’s going on with your music right now?
Well…to be perfectly honest this is really Charlotte’s department. She’s been focusing on the lyrical department and I’ve been so focused on the musical department that I don’t even know the details! [laughs] It’s not my cup of tea!
Do you have a general idea of the theme of the moon or anything?
Not even that! I’m really sorry! [laughs]
Ok! Fair Enough! Let’s move on to the musical side of it then since that’s your specialisation!
Yes! I’ll just say though that since this is one of my first interviews that I didn’t really have the time to read into everything and I could tell you all about the music and development of the album, but the lyrical side I have to do my homework still!
[laughs] That’s no problem! Well on that subject it does seem that you guys have been so busy the past couple years, releasing an album in 2014 and touring constantly after that…a UK tour at the end of last year and another one coming up as well! Seems like you’ve been unbelievably busy…
Yea that’s absolutely true. We have to watch out that we are not going to be too busy. Right now we have so much going on and it’s why we have to separate some things to make it work, otherwise it’s just not possible. But it’s going well, and I think we are almost through the rush hour period, and then we can go to the normal rhythm and schedule.
Well I hope you guys have had at least a little time for rest!
Yea sure, otherwise you get burnouts and stuff…that’s something we don’t want! Besides that it’s also a lot of fun – touring together, making an album, writing stuff together…it’s a lot of fun so it’s also difficult to say no to things!
So now we move to the music part of it! Which is of course the exciting part of the whole Delain experience! So you released an EP first…was it planned to release that first and then release an album?
No, actually not. That’s actually referring to what we just talked about. We received so many requests of playing and touring. We didn’t want to disappoint people…we played the shows, but the consequence of that was we couldn’t release our album earlier because we don’t like rushing an album.
So we decided, ‘you know what, let’s do these tours, let’s play these shows, we already wrote some music so let’s warm up the people with this music we have already as an introduction to the upcoming album and to respond to their requests that asked for new music.’ So I was like ‘alright, let’s make a new EP, and let’s do these tours.’ So then we could move forward with the release of the album and be able to give a yes to all requests. That’s how it came to be.
I mean it’s a really strong song to begin with! That chorus of ‘Suckerpunch’, it’s one of Delain’s greatest songs…from my humble opinion anyway!
Thank you!
Of course. Moving on to ‘Moonbathers’. Now we’re interested to hear musically what this album is going to sound like…is it anything more experimental?
Well I think there a couple of songs that are more ‘tough’ than average for Delain standards. For example if you start with the first track, it’s much faster than an average Delain song…it’s a pretty tough, fast metal song!
I think in general I think this album contains a couple of songs that are more heavy, but also a couple of songs that are more opposite – those that are more mellow than an average Delain song. The differences are bigger than what people might be used to…and also we really aim to give a darker vibe….it has a darker vibe than our previous record which is also different.
So summarise it, yes I do think this one is different!
Just to ask a little bit more about that darker vibe…when you were beginning to write the music did you sort of have an idea of what you wanted the music to sound like before you started penning any notes or anything?
Well I always try…well I say that ‘it always has to be harder, it has to be tougher, it has to be darker than our previous one’. It is the intention…I think that partially succeeded, because as I said it’s a bit darker…so we aimed at that. But when I say that there are also some ballad-esque songs on there like ‘The Last Breath’, which is dark but there are no guitars or drums in it…we have that half too!
It goes both ways, but the darker vibe was the intention…but sometimes you intend something and something else comes out…you cannot always predict it! It’s one thing to aim at something but another often comes out…it’s good to aim for something but you also have to let the creativity flow freely, then it’s kind of surprising what comes out, which is also kind of exciting and I think it worked out just fine!
So what it sounds like is that you had all the music done first and then Charlotte wrote the lyrics and give it some theme or something?
Well how she mostly works in terms of lyrics is that she has a booklet of sketches, and when we start making music she gets a feeling of it and connects to one of her sketches and then she works it out. That works out well, so it’s a little further than just ‘first the music, then the lyrics’.
But also sometimes one of us has an idea…we’ve had a couple times were Charlotte has had a musical idea for example a song called Dance Macabre where she had the musical idea, and automatically she had the lyrical idea with it. I think that’s a good development…if you work with just music than lyrics, you’ll feel that they didn’t give birth together.
I think it’s good that she has an idea when we start making music but it’s not clear yet…but it is something that you write the music and lyrics from scratch together. In general this procedure works for us very well.
Also do you have the other members of the band contribute to the music as well? I know you have a new member in Merel playing with you guys…
Well how Delain has always worked is that Guus, me and Charlotte – Guus was never in the actual band but he was in the background very much part of Delain and the writing machine. We do everything together, and this train goes and we see what happens. On top of that though we are very open for our band members to come and contribute. This means there is no pressure on them, they don’t have to score anything but there is the possibility to do that.
This always takes time though, writing music is always a very underestimated discipline – for example, Timo, who was already been a part of us for five years and three albums, only this album has he got a clear signature in it. He also told me that this is the first album [‘Moonbathers’] that he is really proud of in Delain because of his contribution.
Now this starts to mature, and he is an important part of it, but imagine it took three albums to get there. Now for somebody like Merel, this really takes time…well we just talked recently about how to do a next album procedure…and it means that we are going to rent a nice place somewhere to just write, of course with Guus, Charlotte and me, and that we are also going to do it with the band. The aim is not to produce music, the aim is to develop and see what comes out of it.
The possibilities get more limitless and there is no actual pressure or anything…for me, Guus and Charlotte, the music always comes, but we are very open to share this with the band members, but we are not there yet! Not everyone in the band is there yet. Timo is getting there right now.
It takes time…Rome wasn’t built in a day!
No, exactly!
That’s interesting that you say that you are thinking of a place to rent to write…does that sort of have an impact on how the sound is shaped?
No…no it doesn’t..but it does influence the creative juice itself in terms of that we have no distractions. We actually did that with ‘Moonbathers’ as well. I think we wrote about about 40% of everything on the album in one week when we were in that house that we rented back then. That’s why we decided to do it this time as well but in the future we are going to do it like 4 or 5 times instead of only one time, and then work around that.
It does work. It frees you from any distraction, so you can focus on making music. Or if you don’t feel like making music, you are just going to take a walk in the forest or something like that you know? You need an environment which is nice and peaceful. One that let’s your mind run freely if you know what I mean.
Sure, it all ends up helping the creative process in the end!
Absolutely.
Do you ever find yourself writing on tour at all?
No. We tried it on the last US tour we did with Nightwish…we thought ‘let’s try it, it might be really good to counter the time pressure we have’, but yea…it didn’t work.
When you are so focused into another activity such as touring, and you’re also physically tired…when you have a day off in a hotel for example up front you think ‘oh I have the whole day to write!’, but no, it doesn’t work like that. You need that to recuperate and be able to play the next 4 days. So that doesn’t work.
Do you believe that works for other bands? As so many so you just have to keep touring and touring…
I can only talk from my own experience and I know for me it doesn’t work…but it could be for someone else it does…but I personally don’t know any bands that can do that! Bands that we’ve toured with have never done it on the road. Besides you cannot tour for 360 days in a year anyway, you need some time off, and the contrast, well that’s what I love about my job.
The touring and the writing are a completely different animal. and that gives this job so much diversity and I love it all…but not at the same time! [laughs]
I guess you can’t pack everything into one day, as you said you need the time off!
Yes!
Well on the subject of touring, I know you guys have a UK tour coming up in November, are you guys touring Europe and North America again?
Yea absolutely. The UK I think is our most important territory anyway. We have so many fans there.
It’s been quite a rise for you here, as they say it’s a tough market! But you played your last show here last year and it was a packed out venue!
Yea…we’re spoiled over there! We can’t complain about that. That’s why we have 6 dates in the UK & Ireland, we don’t want to have just 2 shows there. That’s important. Indeed we are going to have a European headline tour, we are setting up a US & Canadian tour for next year, April / May, hopefully I can confirm that soon, and it will be our first headline tour in the States. It’s about time, we’ve done 4 tours as support as people are asking for longer sets…I think it’s time!
And of course we’ve got a 10th anniversary stuff coming up…we have a special show planned in Amsterdam…we’ve got a lot of stuff coming up after the album is released!
Fantastic…I didn’t even realise that…10 years!
Yep, it’s a long time already! And we’re celebrating that in Amsterdam with a special show at a legendary venue called Paradiso where all the big pop gods have played, from The Police to Nirvana…and now we’re going to play there in December…it’s almost sold out too! We’re looking forward to all of that!
I guess you are going to film that show for a DVD as well?
Yea that’s a good point – we got a lot of requests for a DVD in the last couple of years, and we thought ‘when we celebrate our 10th anniversary, why not release a DVD? Let’s not do it with a label because these are fan requests…let’s develop this with the fans themselves and let’s do it through a crowdfunding campaign’. So we worked with Pledge and we set a target to make it happen. Pledge said ‘oh that’s a little bit much…you shouldn’t do that…that’s dangerous, you may not reach your target’.
Well we reached our target in two weeks. Thanks to our fans, we can do it! And now together we can make this DVD that will be shot at the Amsterdam venue and will be released next year. We aren’t bored, let’s but it that way! [laughs]
I guess that’s it for my questions, really looking forward to hearing ‘Moonbathers’, can’t wait for it’s release! Thank you so much Martijn for speaking to us today!
No problem, until next time!
