Helena Iren Michaelsen

Helena Iren Michaelsen — Norwegian vocalist — is one of the first classically trained singers to work in European symphonic metal, and the founder of Imperia. Her path crosses the exact moment when the genre formed. Michaelsen was in Trail of Tears in the late 1990s and then in Sahara Dust — the project that, after she left, would become Epica. That is a significant proximity: European symphonic metal organised itself within a few years, between Norway, the Netherlands and Finland, and the same people circulated among the projects that would come to define the genre. She founded Imperia in 2004, the band she has led ever since, with a repertoire combining orchestration, choir and heavy metal. It is an uncommon case: rather than remaining a guest performer, she built a body of work of her own and sustained it for two decades. Her voice is a classically trained soprano, but she also uses darker registers and less orthodox techniques — which distinguishes her from vocalists working exclusively in the pure lyric register.