In an interview with Paolo Phoenix of Magenta TV conducted at this month’s Wacken Open Air festival in Wacken, Germany, WITHIN TEMPTATION frontwoman Sharon Den Adel was asked how she and her bandmates have managed to create songs that are so catchy that “even mainstream people can’t resist it”. She responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, that’s the one-million-dollar question, I guess. But I don’t know. [Laughs] That’s the magic that you don’t know, and you don’t do it for that. It just happens. And I think that success embraced us by chance also — it’s just things coming together at one point and you had the right song in the right moment. And I guess it appealed to a lot of people, which we didn’t know either. And we were a hobby band when that happened to us — meaning, a hobby band [in the sense that] we were not professional. We did it next to our jobs. And when we did finally get this success, we were, like, ‘You know what? We’re gonna follow this path and see where it ends and just enjoy the ride.’ And we’re still here not having to search for another job again. [Laughs] But our parents are happy about that as well. When your kids just go out and say, ‘Yeah, I wanna be in music,’ they’re, like, ‘Oh my God. Can’t you get a real job?’ But, yeah, for us it turned out really well. And just by having our own compass of what we like ourselves to write, and that became successful somehow.”
Sharon also talked about WITHIN TEMPTATION‘s musical evolution, particularly the band’s knack for borrowing from modern pop and metal production techniques and combining it with WITHIN TEMPTATION‘s classic symphonic metal sound. She said: “Well, we’ve always tried to catch up with the sound of today, meaning you don’t wanna sound like you started 30 years ago, which we did — almost. And you wanna be in the moment of the sound of the moment, because that’s what we love — we love to evolve ourselves and our sounds and try new things. That’s something that we’ve always had since the beginning. We never had an album that sounded like the previous one, more or less. For maybe an outsider who doesn’t know the genre that much, it might sound all alike — I don’t know — but for people who are in the scene, they will find big differences. So that’s one of the reasons. And another thing is that technology has evolved in a way that — we were always very limited with my kind of voice, because it’s a very light voice, and the guitars could never go that low to compensate with my lightness of my voice. So I always had to compensate with my voice or the guitars were in a certain range, and nowadays we can detune everything. It’s a whole range of new variations of lines you can sing and make with your guitars and your music in general. So we’re very happy with that. And we love the new sounds of metalcore bands and everything, what’s happening right now. We’ll never be, of course, a metalcore band, but we use the influences that we can use for our kind of music and make it a new, refreshing sound in a way.”
During a press conference at this year’s Hellfest in Clisson, France, Sharon spoke about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the follow-up to WITHIN TEMPTATION‘s 2023 album “Bleed Out”. She said: ”It’s very in the early stage still, so I’m not a hundred percent sure how it will eventually end up. But we’re trying new stuff again. Although maybe for people outside — the audience and fans and media — it doesn’t look like huge steps we’ve made, but if you compare our latest album to our first, we have made some different changes musically, and for the next album, we’ll make a quite radical new change again — for us anyway. Hopefully you’ll see the same thing and will appreciate it. We’ll have to see.”
In May, Sharon told Ukrainian metalhead Vladyslav Stadnyk, who goes by the name Metal Pilgrim, that she and her bandmates had “already starting writing” material for their next album. “There’s enough to write about,” she explained. “And we’re really enjoying it. We’re gonna take our time for it, because it’s gonna be really a new sound again for the band and everybody needs to adjust a little bit.”
After noting that WITHIN TEMPTATION has seemingly shifted its focus in recent years from writing about personal emotions and societal subjects to tackling global injustices and reflecting the tumultuous state of the world, Metal Pilgrim asked Sharon if she thinks the band’s next album will feature similar lyrical themes. She responded: “I think we’ve always done that also before, but maybe we were more metaphorical and not as clear about the subjects we chose and what we wrote about. It’s hard to go back again, how we did it before this. So, yeah, I think so, but we’re not there yet. The album’s not finished yet, so it’s difficult to say what we’re gonna do eventually, but, yeah, probably there will be a lot still in there.”
This past February, Sharon spoke to the “Everblack” podcast about WITHIN TEMPTATION‘s constant musical evolution, saying: “The fire hasn’t died, so, yes, we do try to continue and develop. But I think that’s what’s always been inspirational to us — not to do the same thing over and over and make that even better, but it’s more, like, to finalize that or something, but more like trying new things. I think that’s what makes our blood stream, makes it boil, and we can’t wait to do the next thing. But I also admire people who can make their style a certain art and make it perfect or somehow. But it’s for us anyway. We always wanna do something new again.”
WITHIN TEMPTATION has eight studio albums under its belt, all accounting for more than four million record sales.
Prior to the release of “Bleed Out”, WITHIN TEMPTATION shifted its focus from putting out albums to releasing a series of singles, enabling the bandmembers to indulge themselves into their creative processes with no production or time restraint and release new music within a heartbeat, resulting in both the band and fans always being on the forefront of newly inspired music.
WITHIN TEMPTATION‘s work has received numerous international awards, including a World Music Award, MTV Europe Music Awards, a Metal Hammer Award and many more, as well as millions of streams on their hit songs such as breakthrough song “Ice Queen”, “Paradise (What About Us?)” (featuring Tarja Turunen) and a collaboration with Jacoby Shaddix of PAPA ROACH on “The Reckoning”.
WITHIN TEMPTATION has previously headlined all the major festivals in Europe — Download, Hellfest, Wacken Open Air, Graspop Metal Meeting and Woodstock Poland — among other major events. During the lockdown, WITHIN TEMPTATION achieved great success with its virtual event “The Aftermath”, a spectacular online show that, thanks to the very latest technology, allowed the band to stretch the boundaries of reality.