The Mysterious Lisa Middelhauve: Frontwoman of Xandria
By Christopher Paul Snyder
November 16, 2024
Middelhauve at a concert with Xandria in Sweden, 2003
MIDDELHAUVE’S CHILDHOOD
Lisa Middelhauve is an enigmatic figure. “By the time she was 3-years-old she began playing the keyboard. In 1986, she received violin lessons, called "Mozartine". In 1990, her violin teacher found Lisa to be very talented, but in 1994 only to appealed to be "hopeless" on the violin and quit. But Lisa remained faithful to the piano and wrote songs about failed relationships at the age of 13 years. A year later, she decided to sing in the opera believing it would not be that difficult, but she departed from the opera going for a more rock oriented technique”.
LYRICAL INSPIRATIONS
XANDRIA (2000 - 2008)
Between 1998 and 2000, Lisa participated in a crazy party at the Irish Pub, until she was discovered by Marco. It was her biggest desire to join with Xandria, even before their debut album.
Lisa co-wrote lyrics throughout her whole career with Xandria and as well performed on the piano on the earliest works.
In April 2008, Middelhauve left the band, citing personal reasons and discomfort at being the band's front woman, which was announced weeks later when Lisa had already left the band on their last tour with her.
However, after replacement singer Kerstin Bischof left the band, she agreed to return for several concerts in spring 2010. The band stated Middelhauve will not enter the band again
THE 2010s (SERENTIY & EVE’S APPLE)
She was touring with Serenity and loved it. She enjoyed her time touring with Charlotte Wessels of Delain, glad to have another girl to spend time with, a rare occurrence for metal bands. She also met Clementine Delauney, future lead singer of Visons of Atlantis.
When asked about fans of Xandria wanting her to return, Middelhauve said she enjoyed her time in the band, but thinks the new singer is a good fit and wishes the best for the band. She loved her time with Serenity, short as it was, and at the time had no regrets leaving Xandria for something else.
The interviewer brought up the surprised reaction from fans to see Middelhauve’s harsh growling vocals for the first time at a recent concert. Lisa said “To be honest, I wasn't allowed to use this voice because the record label didn't like female fronted singers to do that. Now, it's changing and some female singers do that. It was not really a decision; I just like this type of singing. I like heavy stuff; I like death metal so it was just natural for me to try that”.
She also commented on demos she had released on Facebook, but had no plans to finalize them. Lisa was always one to jump from one idea to another, trying new things; this also means she had trouble settling down and sticking with anything long enough to make much progress.
In 2011 Lisa got together an all-female group she named Eve’s Apple. Along with Lisa, Clementine Delauney was also a founding member. The group toured for fun, and although Eve’s Apple had little success, Clementine has talked about it as being a precursor to her more recent All Woman Quartet, Exit Eden.
I took this picture in the XANDRIA dressing room in Berlin during my last tour with the band. I had already left the band weeks before, but my departure was announced much later.
This tour was an absolutely horrible experience for me, especially since neither the remaining members nor I managed to talk with each others. I drowned my feeling of total isolation in much more alcohol than I was used to. (And I'm very glad I didn't go on like this after the tour.)
And although it's years ago now, although I've learned to understand and support the new XANDRIA, although I highly respect their current musical work, there's a part of me that still hasn't overcome the sadness and disappointment of that time back then.
Well, I'm still young. Let's be optimistic that I won't spoil my life with this kind of negativity forever. [1]
THE AFTER LIFE
Following her departure, Lisa had begun writing and recording material for her future solo album. Many demos were released through YouTube on how they would sound. But Lisa put her solo work on hold in 2010 when the remaining members of Xandria asked Lisa to come back to finish the remaining live shows after their singer, Kerstin Bischof also had left the band.
In 2012, she announced through her Facebook, that she had returned to the studio to finish the process of releasing her solo material, and had released some previews on her SoundCloud account. However, in a 2016 Facebook post, she stated that she had no idea if she was ever going to perform on stage or record music again.
In August 2005, Lisa married bandmate Nils Middelhauve, the bassist for Xandria at the time. On 16 December 2013 Lisa announced via Facebook that she and her husband had divorced. Some years later, she announced that she's married her new partner and will be named Elisabeth Rodermund from now. Her daughter was born in January 2018.
