Delain

Live at The House of Blues

Hollywood, California

September 29th, 2014

Review and Photos by Travis Baumann

Delain are a Dutch Symphonic Metal band that features powerful, moving keyboard orchestrations, driving guitar and bass lines, and a comely female lead singer with a beautiful melodic voice.

The band was founded by the keyboard player of Within Temptation, Martijn Westerholt, after he fell ill and left that project. He found the amazing Charlotte Wessels and the rest is history so to speak .

They have a number of albums out but I found out about them with the release of "We Are the Others" which is from 2012. Since then they put out the "Interlude" EP and just recently "The Human Contradiction" full length which they are currently touring in support of.

This is the first time since I started listening to them that they have toured the States that I am aware of and they were in direct support to Sonata Arctica from Finland.

They opened the set with "Mother Machine" off of "We Are the Others" and had an immediate response from the audience. They followed up with another fan favorite from that album, "Get the Devil Out of Me".

They moved to the new album for "Army of Dolls" and then "Stardust" which is one of the more well known songs off of the new album since it was given the music video treatment.

Delain played "Milk and Honey" off of "We Are the Others" before delving into their older album "Lucidity" for three songs in a row; "Sleepwalkers Dream", "The Gathering" and "Pristine".

Being an opening act, they only had time for one more song and treated us to the title track from "We Are the Others", which is one of my favorite songs of theirs and the audience obviously felt likewise.

Before they left the stage Charlotte told the audience they just got news that they would be returning in the spring of the new year touring with Nightwish, which made everyone cheer.

It was a really good show and they are a great band. I wish they would have had more time as I would have loved to hear "Tell Me, Mechanist" and "My Masquerade" off the new album.

They hold their own with other genre greats like Epica, ReVamp, Within Temptation, and Nightwish (interestingly enough all of these except Nightwish are from the Netherlands as well, but even their current singer is Dutch).

Charlotte has a distinct voice that stands out from these other bands and I like the use of male background vocals on some songs, both grunted and clean. They also have an awesome roster of guest musicians on various tracks including Marco from Nightwish and Burton C. Bell from Fear Factory.

I am really looking forward to seeing them again on the upcoming tour with Sabaton and Nightwish, two amazing bands and a full night of epic music with all three of them playing together.

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