Charlotte Wessels' The Obsession — Incubus (Official Video)
Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare, rebuilt as a living tableau: the creature squatting on the sleeper's chest, paper bats circling a painted sky. Charlotte Wessels turned her solo project into a full band of ex-Delain colleagues, and Incubus is the album's opening statement. If the rest of Mute Swan Empire holds this level, 5 February can't come soon enough.
Pause the video anywhere near the start and you are looking at a painting. Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare, 1781: the sleeper draped across the bed, the creature squatting on her chest. The Obsession rebuilt it as a physical set. Cut-out paper bats, a painted sky, a masked thing in matted fur where Fuseli put his demon. Most of the clip stays inside that hand-built bedroom, deep reds broken up by colder, paler frames. It looks like a diorama that came alive and regrets it.
The woman under the creature is the Insomniac, the first of the archetypes that populate Mute Swan Empire, out 5 February 2027 on Napalm Records. Wessels puts it plainly: “Incubus is about the things that keep us awake at night, both literally and figuratively.”
Here’s the part that makes this more than a pretty video. Wessels fronted Delain from 2005 until February 2021, when the band lost her, guitarist Timo Somers, bassist Otto Schimmelpenninck van der Oije and drummer Joey Marin de Boer all at once. Nearly six years later, that exodus has a name. The Obsession, after her 2024 solo album, with Nina van Beelen added on keys. Mute Swan Empire is their first album under the band name. Not a backing band. A band.
The Netherlands built the symphonic sound with Within Temptation and Epica. On this evidence, the country is nowhere near done with it.
Fifteen tracks. One archetype each. Incubus opens the album, and it opened with a painting. I’ll take that trade.