Charlotte Wessels has announced her new album, “Mute Swan Empire”, due for release on 5 February through Napalm Records. The news was confirmed in a press release, which also revealed the record’s sixteen tracks and a European tour that opens on 4 February in Belgium. No Spanish dates have been confirmed so far, but the vocalist will play El Teatrito in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 15 December.
Sixteen tracks, several exclusive formats
The album collects sixteen songs: “Incubus”, “In Leta Via”, “Tempest”, “After Us”, “The Flood”, “Good Girl (If You’re Ready To Die)”, “The Hermit Song”, “Emergency Kit”, “One Day They Will Come For You”, “Weeping Madonna”, “This Is Not An Opinion”, “The Villain”, “Let The Music Decide”, “Incantations”, “Starling” and “Bells Of Lynn”.
Napalm Records will offer the album in a range of formats, several of them exclusive to the label’s webshop: a double vinyl in blood-marble effect, a vinyl-and-shirt combo, a CD digisleeve-and-shirt combo, a CD earbook, plus a standard double vinyl edition and a CD digisleeve. A white-swan double vinyl, exclusive to Wessels’ Patreon supporters, will only be available through her own store.
Wessels produced the album together with Joost van den Broek at Sandlane Recording Facilities, where it was also mixed. Cellist Elianne Anemaat contributed to the record, and Vikram Shankar handled the orchestral and keyboard arrangements.
A story that grew out of the songs
Wessels said the album was not planned as a concept record, but the songs gradually revealed a shared thread:
I didn’t set out to compose a concept album from the start, but at some point in the process I began to realise that all the new songs I had written were connected. Each one seemed to suggest a different response to the world we live in: denial, complicity, withdrawal, blind obedience, selective empathy, but also hope and connection, among other things. I started to identify these recurring themes and archetypes and, in the end, I realised they were all part of a much wider story. I felt the desire to follow that thread wherever it led me, exploring the concept first through the music, and later also through visual art and aesthetics. That discovery became the basis of “Mute Swan Empire”.
She added that musically the album moves between some of the heaviest material the band has created and moments of great vulnerability, and that she believes the group has never sounded so cohesive.
Her live band for the record consists of guitarist Timo Somers, who also recorded the album’s bass parts, drummer Joey Marin de Boer, bassist Otto Schimmelpenninck van der Oije and keyboardist Nina Van Beelen.
From Delain to a solo career
Wessels is a Dutch vocalist, born on 13 May 1987, best known as the former lead singer and primary lyricist of symphonic metal band Delain, which she fronted from 2005 until her departure in February 2021. Before Delain she sang in the gothic metal band To Elysium, and in 2015 she formed the symphonic rock project Phantasma with Georg Neuhausser of Serenity and Oliver Philipps of Everon, releasing the concept album “The Deviant Hearts” on Napalm Records, accompanied by her debut novella of the same name.
After leaving Delain she launched her solo career the same year with “Tales from Six Feet Under”, followed by “Tales from Six Feet Under, Vol. II” in 2022 and “The Obsession” in September 2024. “Mute Swan Empire” will be her fourth solo album and her first since “The Obsession”.
The European tour begins on 4 February in Belgium, one day before the album’s release.
