Charlotte Wessels’ The Obsession – live at Dynamo Metalfest 2025 (Full Set)

Setting the Stage at Dynamo Metalfest 2025

On Saturday, August 16, 2025, Charlotte Wessels brought a full-throated incarnation of her solo project to Dynamo Metalfest, building a set around The Obsession that was both precise and emotionally capacious. The festival’s heavy music pedigree met an artist intent on broadening the contours of modern symphonic and alternative metal, yielding a performance that balanced visceral impact with chamber-like detail. This was not just a festival appearance, it was a carefully directed live statement that translated a richly produced studio world into a living, breathing conversation with a loud, attentive crowd.

The Ensemble and the Production Spine

Wessels was flanked by a tight, road-tested band geared for dynamic range and textural agility. Timo Somers handled guitars with a blend of clarity and weight, shaping riffs and filigrees that served the song first. Joey Marin de Boer brought punch and control behind the kit, engineering momentum without sacrificing nuance. Otto Schimmelpenninck van der Oije anchored the low end with a rounded, articulate bass presence that allowed the arrangements to breathe. Nina van Beelen colored the set with keys and backing vocals that were essential rather than ornamental, often widening choruses into something choral. And Elianne Anemaat on cello threaded an acoustic voice through the electric chassis, connecting the project’s orchestral leanings to its rock heart.

The show’s sonic and visual cohesion spoke to a production team that understood both scale and detail. Front-of-house engineer Laurens Evers kept a firm hand on separation and dynamics, so that heavy passages hit hard without smearing the midrange where Wessels’ voice, keys and cello interact. Marc Huizinga designed lights and screens to move in lockstep with the music’s architecture, cueing atmosphere rather than drowning it. The post-production team also deserves mention: the full-set audio was mixed by Guido Aalbers and mastered by Andy vanDette, balancing immediacy with clarity. On the visual side, cameras and direction came via Takken Media, with editing by Casper Engelen, ensuring the performance translates compellingly offstage as well.

A Set Built Around The Obsession

A brief, cinematic intro set the tone before the band plunged into songs that showcased The Obsession’s elastic grammar: electronic pulse meeting rock rhythm section, art-pop sheen braided with metal muscle, storytelling delivered with theatrical poise but grounded in direct, conversational phrasing. Wessels sang with restraint when the songs demanded intimacy and stepped into a brighter, more emphatic register when the choruses asked to lift. The pacing of the set mattered too, with high-energy peaks offset by reflective stretches that allowed the arrangements to shift shape.

Song Highlights

Chasing Sunsets opened the body of the set with luminous synths and a brisk backbeat, Somers’ guitar lines tracing the edges while the bass-and-drum tandem built a subtle crest beneath the hook. Wessels’ vocal phrasing was agile, playing with breath and release to keep the chorus airborne.
Dopamine leaned into a modern, electro-metal cadence, its rhythm section snapping tight around an earworm vocal line. The performance highlighted the song’s push-pull between gratification and anxiety, with keys adding jittery sparkle and the cello offering a countermelody that hinted at turbulence under the gloss.
Ode To The West Wind brought literary gravitas into focus, its arrangement widening into a sweeping mid-tempo surge. Anemaat’s cello took a more prominent role here, singing against sustained keyboard pads as the drums shifted from spacious tom work to cymbal lift. The piece felt like a turning of seasons, grounded by Wessels’ emotive but measured delivery.
The Crying Room arrived like a confession withheld until the last possible moment. Van Beelen’s keys and harmonies expanded the song’s interior monologue, while the rhythm section kept a steady, unshowy pulse that let the storytelling sit at the center. The quiet-loud dynamics were handled with restraint rather than spectacle, which made the crests land harder.
Vigor + Valor was a rallying point. Guitars moved from clipped syncopation to open-chord propulsion, and the drums found space for brief flourishes that never broke the groove. The chorus felt like a mission statement, compressing grit and grace into a single gesture.
Breathe; made deliberate use of space, the semicolon in its title reflected in the music’s poised pause-and-swell. Minimalist keys underpinned a vocal that slowly unfurled, while the cello and guitars drew close to a single, sustained horizon line before the band opened it up.
Praise! walked a line between fervor and critique, its rhythm taut, its call-and-response architecture shaping a chorus that invited the crowd in. The live treatment sharpened the edges, with lights and screens punctuating cadence changes.
Soft Revolution carried a tone of tender defiance. Mid-tempo and texturally generous, it placed stacked harmonies against chiming guitar figures and a steady drum motor, building toward a crest that felt less like a shout and more like a collective exhale.
The Exorcism closed the set with cathartic precision. Palm-muted riffs and a clipped beat set the stage for a vocal that oscillated between icy focus and redemptive heat. By the final chorus, the band locked into a single arc, then cut clean, leaving the resonance to hang.

Sound and Arrangements

What makes The Obsession’s live presentation distinctive is the way it uses contrast without calling attention to the mechanism. Acoustic timbres coexist with heavily processed textures. Guitars roar and then recede into glimmering delay. Keys are often foundational, carrying not just harmony but the sense of place, while the cello provides an organic line that keeps the music tethered to breath and grain. The mix foregrounded Wessels’ voice, not by isolating it, but by allowing the frequency spectrum to fold around it. Cymbals were controlled, the kick stayed tight, bass occupied a generous but defined pocket, and the top end remained smooth even at higher volumes.

Musicianship across the board leaned toward serving the songs rather than showcasing chops. Somers’ tone choices were thoughtful, moving from glassy cleans to articulate gain; de Boer’s feel stayed locked whether the tune demanded straight-ahead drive or subtle metric shifts. Schimmelpenninck van der Oije’s playing delivered low-end definition that never masked the cello, and van Beelen’s synth voicings avoided clutter by carving out roles for pads, leads and rhythmic accents. Anemaat’s cello lines, sometimes doubling vocal melodies and other times counterpointing them, proved key to the set’s character.

Words, Motifs and Emotional Core

Wessels’ lyrical lens across The Obsession ranges from self-interrogation to communal rallying, frequently examining autonomy, desire, and the rituals we adopt to survive the modern attention economy. Titles like Dopamine and The Exorcism frame the poles: reward and renunciation, compulsion and release. The Crying Room suggests a space for grief that is both private and structured, while Vigor + Valor speaks to resilience and the ethics of care. Soft Revolution explores transformation without blunt-force rhetoric, sketching change as a daily practice rather than a single flashpoint. And Ode To The West Wind, with its nod to literary tradition, locates the work within a longer arc of art wrestling with nature, entropy and renewal.

Onstage, these themes were made legible through delivery and arrangement rather than overstatement. Wessels’ diction remained clear, her phrasing attentive to narrative shape, and the band leaned into dynamics that reinforced meaning. The result was a set that addressed complexity without losing immediacy.

Visual Language and Flow

The staging operated with intention. Lighting and screen content were cued to structural shifts in the music, accenting drops, pre-choruses and codas, and setting distinct atmospheres for the heavier and more intimate passages. Camera work emphasized interplay over spectacle, often framing the exchanges between voice, strings and keys that define the project’s identity. The show’s flow felt continuous, more suite than sequence, with transitions that preserved momentum while letting each song keep its own weather.

Why This Performance Matters

At Dynamo Metalfest, The Obsession shed any lingering question about how Charlotte Wessels’ solo voice sits within the heavy spectrum. The answer was in the details: chamber textures given room to breathe, electronic elements woven into rock architecture without feeling grafted on, vocals that privilege storytelling while meeting the scale of a festival stage. It was a persuasive argument for a version of modern heavy music that is porous to pop, literate without being precious, and emotionally direct without resorting to cliché.

Credits

Vocals: Charlotte Wessels
Guitars: Timo Somers
Bass: Otto Schimmelpenninck van der Oije
Drums: Joey Marin de Boer
Keys and Backing Vocals: Nina van Beelen
Cello: Elianne Anemaat
Front of House: Laurens Evers
Lights and Screens: Marc Huizinga
Mix: Guido Aalbers
Mastering: Andy vanDette
Camera and Direction: Takken Media
Edit: Casper Engelen

What Comes Next

For listeners who want to go deeper, The Obsession Deluxe Edition captures the project’s studio breadth, from electronics-forward tracks to orchestral adornments and expanded arrangements. Looking ahead, Wessels heads out across Europe and the UK in 2026 alongside Epica and Amaranthe, a touring context well suited to the project’s hybrid intensity. For ongoing releases, behind-the-scenes material and a growing song archive, her Patreon community continues to serve as a hub for new work and deep cuts.

At Dynamo Metalfest, Charlotte Wessels presented The Obsession as something elastic enough to fill a big stage and intricate enough to reward close listening. That duality is the point, and this full set made the case with confidence.