Review: Charlotte Wessels – Tales From Six Feet Under

Tales From Six Feet Under is the solo debut of ex-Delain vocalist Charlotte Wessels. For 16 years Charlotte was the front lady of the symphonic metal band that had a huge lineup change recently. But well before this happened, Charlotte wanted to give the ideas that were not suitable for Delain a platform. That platform became Patreon. A way to scratch her creative itch.

Tales From Six Feet Under is a compilation of songs of her first year on Patreon, of which she already released a couple songs as singles to the wider audience. For those who expect a whole album of symphonic metal songs, Tales From Six Feet Under might be a little disappointing to you. Because although Charlotte’s well-known sound and vocals can clearly be heard, the album brings a lot of musical diversity in different genres. Charlotte’s creativity and musical talent really shines through. Every song on the album comes as a surprise and is vastly different from its predecessor. Apart from the aforementioned iconic Charlotte Wessels sound, there is no overarching description that does justice to the entire album. And this is a good thing. One of the surprising tracks is the Dutch song Afkicken. The song is very funky and has strong and feisty lyrics. It is easily one of my favorite tracks on the album, but the joy doesn’t stop here!

Superhuman and Victor, where you can still hear a hint of Delain hidden in there, although it’s very subtle, are both really strong songs with a powerful story. That might be one of the strongest points of Tales From Six Feet Under. Everything feels very personal and that shouldn’t be a surprise given the fact that Charlotte herself produced and wrote everything.

If the track list features such a diverse array of songs, then there can easily be one or two that you don’t like. For me those are New Mythology and Masterpiece. Those two are a little bit too poppy for my taste.

Cry Little Sister is a wonderful cover from the film classic The Lost Boys and Charlotte did an amazing job here. The Gothic nature of this song suits her roots very well if I may say so. Another pearl on the album is Lizzie. A strong duet with Arch Enemy singer Alissa White-Gluz which is the only ballad.

But now I want to talk about Soft Revolution, the last track on the album. This song to me is an anthem for everyone who is going to a tough time. And I think all of us can relate to it especially looking back on to the last one and a half years. It’s sort of like a We Are the Others 2.0 so to speak. It hits me every time I listen to it. What a beautiful song!

Guitar riffs, keyboards, additional vocals, Charlotte does everything herself. When listening to the album I realized that Charlotte again made an everlasting impression on me that’s not going away anytime soon. What I also realize is that due to her sheer creativity and uniqueness, it might have as well been unavoidable for her to eventually go on this path, one way or the other, even though not everything was planned. Because let’s be honest, it would’ve been an incredible shame for someone with such unbelievable talent, determination and versatility to be bound to a specific genre and leave the rest of her ideas untouched, right? The choice for Charlotte to use Patreon as a platform is a great one, but it is also good to know that she doesn’t forget the people that can’t support her with a monthly fee but still want to listen to this great music. I hope we can see a lot more of her creativity in the future.

Here you can read our earlier interview with Charlotte about Phantasma.

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