Delain

Great art often comes from the most trying of times, and Delain are one of the best examples of this. In 2001, Martjin Westerholt was forced to leave his band Within Temptation as he was suffering from Pfeiffer’s disease, and although he was soon cleared of the disease, he still needed to take the rest of the following year off to recuperate. Of course, for Westerholt, recuperation meant putting together a band with several local musicians to him and recording a demo tape under the name Delain. The band were never intended to be a genuine project however, and once the demo was recorded Westerholt left the band behind to focus on other projects. However, in 2005 he teamed up with vocalist Charlotte Wessels to restart Delain as an entirely new project, signed to Roadrunner records and began work on their debut album “Lucidity”.

The album was written and recorded without intending to ever perform the songs live, with Westerholt and Wessels tapping members of other Dutch metal bands to record the record with. However, the critical and commercial response to the album was so positive that Wessels and Westerholt formed a live band to tour the project shortly after the records release in Septmber 2006. Ever since then the band have remained one of the must see symphonic metal acts of today, with three further hit albums in their native Netherlands released since their debut and hugely acclaimed live shows performed all over the world. For coming back from fire circumstances and becoming one of the most acclaimed metal bands of modern times, Delain come highly recommended.