Over the years, Dutch singer Laura Guldemond has evolved into a woman of a thousand voices. Ever since joining Swiss heavy/power metal band Burning Witches, the rest of the world has also got to know her powerful delivery, her expressive diction, and her versatile approach to singing heavy metal.

“I like trying out new things”, Guldemond states. “The others in Burning Witches like it when my voice sounds relatively deep, so we have been playing around with lower keys in recent years. You can hear that really well in a song like ‘The Dark Tower’. There are some moments where I wonder whether I’m starting to sound too much like a man, but they are always assuring me that it sounds good.

If a vocal part is very low, you can actually feel that it is. The same with a very high melody: you can feel that one quite high in your throat. Obviously, the easiest thing would always be to get in the middle of those extremes. But I don’t necessarily have any preferences one way or the other. I just like trying out new things, and learning to get better at them.

These days, I have been trying to learn to use vocal fry better than I could before. So who knows? Maybe I will be doing something with that in the future. But it has to get better first. Singing clean with a bit of distortion on it is something I know I can do well at this point. If I add something that doesn’t sound quite as good, and you can actually hear that difference in quality, it will just end up sounding weird.”

Putting the Effort In

Guldemond’s specialty of rough-edged, powerful clean vocals is a result of hard work. “I kind of found out that I wasn’t good at it at all and started practicing really hard”, she smiles. “It is something I started doing when I was a freshman or a sophomore studying at the Metal Factory in Eindhoven.

One of the things I noticed was that I had a bit of a comfort zone. I could do those high screams quite well, as that was one of the first things I started practicing. To be honest, I didn’t really understand what I was doing – I understand now – but at some point you notice that some things go well during certain sections of songs, and then that’s what you keep doing every single time. Simply because you think: that works, right?

After that, I tried to focus on new things many times, and at a certain point, it all starts improving. When I joined Burning Witches, they really pushed me to employ vocals that were even more raw than what I was doing already. That wasn’t really a thing in ShadowRise, where the contrast between the clean vocals and the growls was much more of a feature. But as long as you put the effort in, you’ll eventually get better at what you do.”

A Welcoming Group of People

While Burning Witches has introduced Guldemond to a wider audience, joining an established Swiss band while living in the Netherlands comes with its own set of challenges. “I am the type of person that needs a lot of time to get used to other people anyway”, she admits. “But they have been a fun, welcoming group of people that gets along well from the very beginning. We go out to dinner sometimes, we hang out after rehearsals, so that is nice.

At the very beginning of an album and tour cycle, a lot of rehearsal time is required, when there are so many new things to consider. ‘The Dark Tower’ has been out for a while now, so that doesn’t necessarily require me to be there as often. And we can take care of writing lyrics and vocal melodies via WhatsApp. There’s a show coming up in Switzerland in December, so that’s the next time I will be going there.

When it comes to writing my melodies and lyrics, I have a fairly large amount of freedom. Sometimes they come up with something they like, but even then, I am free to try something else, or we can discuss various ideas. It’s always fairly open. It kind of depends on how attached they are to the ideas they already have. There are plenty of times when there is no idea at all yet, and I can just make up whatever I like.”

Mentally Prepared

Given the fact that Burning Witches already had two albums out prior to Guldemond joining them, some of the band’s audience also needed some time to get used to her. “When it had just happened, I know there were some fans who thought: no more Burning Witches for me”, she says. “Fortunately, there weren’t that many of them. There are a couple of very fanatic people, but they generally have not been very bothersome to me.

To be completely honest, I think it had been a much more emotional process for the rest of the band than it has for me. In a way, I had kind of already prepared myself for such reactions. The stories are out there. Like Tarja and Nightwish, for example. You still hear people complaining about that these days, which makes me think: guys, seriously, still? You know it is going to happen, and you know it is going to keep happening. So I was mentally prepared for that. Some of those people have returned, others haven’t. That’s just how things go.

Vocally, I felt I had a better lower register than the previous singer live, but I really like how her lower register sounds on the records. And some of my higher notes didn’t quite have enough lower frequencies, so to speak. That’s when they started tuning half a step down, which has sort of strengthened the low-end in the music.”

Polishing Up

Communication can be a challenge as well, given the fact that Swiss German doesn’t resemble the German that is taught in Dutch schools all that much. “By now, I have learned to speak a little German”, Guldemond says. “And a tiny bit of Swiss German, but really just enough to understand just a fraction of what they say to each other. It definitely still is a bit of a challenge.

To be fair, it took me a while to learn to speak Standard German as well. At some point, I was asked to give workshops in Germany, and that required me to really learn how to speak German. So that’s when I decided to pull out Duolingo and polish up my German. But speaking Swiss German well is not something I expect to be able to do any time soon.

But speaking Swiss German well is not something I expect to be able to do any time soon. Fortunately, everybody in the band speaks English. That was a bit of a struggle for Romana (Kalkuhl, guitarist), our band leader, in the beginning. She didn’t speak English very well at the time, but she has gotten a lot better at that as well.”

A Type of Idealism

“Shortly after joining Burning Witches, they showed me how they handle the business side of things, and told me: this is how we did it with our previous singer, this is how we can do it with you as well. They did offer me to do things differently if I wanted to. For example, they offered to pay me out in periodic wages if I wanted to, which is something they took into consideration as a result of previous experiences. But I told them they could just go ahead and do things the way they were used to doing them.

Because let’s be honest: if you’re in a band, and you’re writing your own music, the way you really want to be paid out is for the songwriting and the songs you release. There is always a glimmer of hope that you will one day write a hit song and you will be able to make some money off of that. But of course, that almost never happens. Especially not if you write this type of metal.

Maybe you could call it a type of idealism that gave me the feeling of: alright, I will be writing the lyrics, and let’s just split everything the way they were used to. In a way, that contributed to making me feel like actually being part of the band, which is a completely different thing than feeling like you’re just being hired to record your parts.”

Building Up Stamina

Being in good shape physically is an important part of being part of a touring band. Especially as a singer. “I am often afraid of getting a sore throat, so my main priority is keeping nice and warm”, Guldemond explains. “During summers, I hardly ever have a sore throat, but once winter rears its head, I have to be careful. And to be fair, during spring and autumn as well. Also, when I work out too hard, and my body gets tired, I get a sore throat as well. That is something to watch out for.

If I know we are going to be headlining and playing a long set, I know I should ideally build up my stamina a little. Then I’ll sing for half an hour, maybe rest for a day, do another half hour, rest another day, then do an hour, rest for a day, another hour… And then I can usually make it. Then I am able to do a tour. But to keep doing it is an important part of it.

Especially if I have just been on vacation, and I haven’t sung for a while. Then it truly is important to build up my stamina, as I’m really going to feel the difference once I have to do a longer set. Usually, I will probably make it through without too much trouble, especially since my vacations don’t tend to be very long, but it’s a big plus if it doesn’t feel like a struggle. Plus, I have to practice the set anyway, so I’m really just killing two birds with one stone.

At the moment, we usually open with ‘Unleash the Beast’. The difficulty with that one is the fact that I do all the little voices in between as well, which means I barely have time to breathe, while running around for the first song as well. To be completely honest, that’s more difficult for me than it strictly being hard on my voice.”

A Big Discovery

Although Guldemond occasionally covers songs in different genres on her YouTube channel – more often than not in metal arrangements – she has been immersing herself in hard rock and heavy metal for a majority of her life. “It was kind of a big discovery for me”, she smiles. “My parents never really went any heavier than Queen. Which I like, but then I discovered Within Temptation, and I loved it. That was probably mainly because it sounds a little mysterious. That’s what I liked about it, at least.

When the time came that I had enough allowance to buy albums, I found W.A.S.P.’s ‘Dying for the World’ right next to Within Temptation. I really like W.A.S.P.  as well. From then on, I started listening to more and more different things. Quite quickly after that, I decided that I wanted to play guitar. And I did have a guitar, so I did try to play it, but I had no lessons, and I ended up giving up. I did already sing, and that’s what I kept doing.

Fortunately, my voice was already there. You don’t have to plug it in, and you don’t have to tune it. It’s a lot easier that way. It’s very lazy-people-proof, haha! Of course, I did not realize at the time what an important part of the job taking care of your instrument is, even if you’re not about to go on stage.

When I was about twenty years old, I decided to take things a little more seriously, and that’s when I started taking singing lessons. Later on, I decided that I had to study music somehow. I auditioned for the Haarlem conservatory and ended up in the preparatory course for it, but then the I came across the Metal Factory, and I was part of the first batch of students there.”

Step by Step

These days, Guldemond has her own students she gives singing lessons to. “I always try to find ways to make them practice things step by step”, she says. “There are certain techniques that require you to use a little more power, which means they are potentially more dangerous, as more power is a bigger burden on your vocal cords if you do it wrong. That’s why I try to explain things step by step, so they can actually warm up to it step by step, allowing them to do things properly from the moment they start to add more power to it.

Another thing I like to say is that people are lucky that they aren’t able to do certain things and decide to take lessons in order to be able to do them. Because if you try those things by yourself, there is a good chance that you will learn to do them the wrong way, and it tends to be more difficult to unlearn something after the fact. At least, that’s how I experienced it when I was trying to learn things of which I later found out I was doing them wrong.

If you are used to singing things with a certain style in a certain position, and you try to do it differently, it often becomes different to maintain the balance you need once you start putting more power behind it. That is often the case if you want to belt in a higher register; it becomes difficult to do something different at that pitch. That is why I am trying to make it a gradual process with all of the people who take singing lessons with me.”