Charlotte Wessels Incubus Video Opens the Mute Swan Empire Era

By Dani Reyes,

Charlotte Wessels in black leather stands with the four members of The Obsession beneath a painted sun and moon archway on a beach
Photo: Tim Tronckoe

A first single and a video

Charlotte Wessels released "Incubus" and its official music video on November 4, 2026. The video is credited to Charlotte Wessels' The Obsession, the name her band now carries, and it is the first single from Mute Swan Empire, a new studio album due February 5, 2027. "Incubus" is also the opening track on the record.

Charlotte Wessels' The Obsession, "Incubus" (Official Music Video)

According to the announcement, the song gives a face to one of the album's archetypes, the Insomniac, and was inspired by Henry Fuseli's painting The Nightmare. Wessels explained the idea in the announcement: "'Incubus' is about the things that keep us awake at night, both literally and figuratively. It introduces the Insomniac, one of the archetypes that inhabit Mute Swan Empire: A character lying awake beneath the weight of an incubus, wearing a mask made up of her fears, worries, and the many crises unfolding around her."

She added that the character is not only a victim: "But there is also a certain strength in this character and the very act of perseverance. As the song puts it: 'You can't break what's already broken. You can't burn what is made of fire.'"

Who made it

The credits in the video description name Wessels as the writer of the music and lyrics, with arrangements by Wessels and guitarist Timo Somers and additional key and orchestral arrangements by Vikram A. Shankar. Joost van den Broek produced the song with Wessels at Sandlane Recording Facilities and mixed it there, and Tony Lindgren mastered it at Fascination Street Studios. The same description credits the video to Claire Stuart at KLÈR, with direction by Claire and Tim Tronckoe.

What the rollout tells us

The first thing the campaign does is rename the band. The musicians Wessels gathered for her last album have, in the words of the announcement, "since taken on its name," so the act is now billed as Charlotte Wessels' The Obsession. Wessels framed that as the point of the new record: "Despite how varied the record is, I think we've never sounded more together like a band."

The second thing is the choice of opener. Leading with the first song on the album, and with a song built around a single character, sets up how the rest of the record will be presented. Wessels said as much in the announcement: "This album has grown into a universe of its own, and I can't wait for people to start meeting the characters that inhabit it, starting with this sleepless soul."

The third is timing. The announcement says the band's first headline tour of Europe and the UK starts one day before the album comes out, so the record and the tour arrive together.

The album

Wessels said the concept arrived on its own. "I didn't set out to write a concept record from the start, but somewhere along the way, I began to realize that all the latest songs I'd written were connected," she said in the announcement. "Each of them seemed to embody a different response to the world we're living in: denial, complicity, withdrawal, blind obedience, selective empathy, but also hope and connection, and so on."

The title draws on the myth of the swan song, and the announcement poses the question behind it in her words: "What if we don't get one? What if we've pushed ourselves so close to ecological and social collapse that we've lost, or no longer deserve, that final act of grace? Will the swan remain silent?"

According to the announcement, the album uses words by the medieval mystics Hildegard von Bingen on "In Leta Via" and Julian of Norwich on "The Hermit Song," and "Bells Of Lynn" takes fragments of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem of the same name. "One Day They Will Come For You" is inspired by Martin Niemöller's "First They Came For The Communists." Elianne Anemaat plays cello on several tracks. The tracklist runs:

The preorder page lists the album on vinyl and CD alongside shirt bundles.

Where she comes from

Wessels fronted the Dutch symphonic metal band Delain before her departure in 2021, according to Metal Hammer, which also notes the two Tales From Six Feet Under records she released on her own. Her previous album, The Obsession, came out in September 2024 with former Delain bandmates Timo Somers, Otto Schimmelpenninck van der Oije and Joey Marin de Boer in the lineup, as Heavy Consequence reported. The announcement adds that she has released a new song every month through Patreon since 2020, and that "Incantations" first appeared there before being rearranged for this album.

The current lineup listed in the announcement is Wessels on vocals and keys, Somers on guitars and backing vocals, Marin de Boer on drums, Schimmelpenninck van der Oije on bass and Nina Van Beelen on keys and backing vocals. On the album itself, Somers played the bass.

On the road

The band's tour page carries the dates. Before the new year, the announcement lists shows in Brazil and Argentina in December. The Mute Swan Empire Tour then runs from February 4 in Sint Niklaas, Belgium, to February 27 in Utrecht, the city the announcement calls her hometown, with Melissa Bonny of Ad Infinitum as support on every date except Essen. Stops include London, Glasgow, Manchester, Paris, Zurich, Milan, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Krakow, Berlin and Copenhagen.

Dani Reyes, Behind the Boards. Credits check: Joost van den Broek and Charlotte Wessels on "Incubus".

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