WITHIN TEMPTATION – Photo by Patric Ullaeus
When it comes to symphonic metal WITHIN TEMPTATION are definitely the most famous band of our time. Earlier this year the band’s new album Hydra was released and NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION took the chance to talk to singer Sharon den Adel. WITHIN TEMPTATION are one of the most successful Dutch bands of all time, and their new album features collaborations with artists like Howard Jones, Tarja, Dave Pirner and even XZIBIT. So there was a lot to talk about with the amazingly nice and wonderful Sharon den Adel.
NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION is for people who think a bit more about life, want a bit more from life and give a bit more to live. In how far does this motto fit to WITHIN TEMPTATION?
This totally fits!
…thinking a bit more about life. Well, when you are writing lyrics it’s always about thinking about your own perspective on certain subjects and also I see now a development from how I would describe certain emotions or translate them into music. How I do this now is so different from when we started the band. We’ve been around for 17 years with this band and we already had a band before, called THE CIRCLE, that was doing the same kind of music. So we’ve been around for a long time and you see that the lyrics did change and that you give a different picture about sometimes the same subjects, from a different ankle. Over the years you get a better perspective about how the world works. Maybe it’s because we hopefully all get a bit wiser when getting older. We are always busy with that. Somehow you are forced to think about these kind of things that because you have to write lyrics.
…getting a bit more from life. We are not satisfied by what we have sometimes. It’s not about always wanting more and more, but it’s about wanting to have as much possible out of life of what’s in it. Living the moment and enjoying life. I think this also comes with the years. Now we have a lot of collaborations on our new album Hydra, and a lot of people say ‘that’s pretty much, why didn’t you do less?’ It’s because it’s also nice for us getting to know these people. Not only about the music side, also it enriches us as people. It’s a journey. Everything is about doing new things. There’s nothing nicer than to meet new people that you have a connection with. It’s an enrichment to your life. It’s no always like just us, WITHIN TEMPTATION, against the rest of the world, it’s cool to have some people joining us on stage and getting to really know them.
…who gives more to live. Well, I hope we do give a bit more to live. But I do think so. We hear a lot of people saying that we deal with certain subjects that ‘helped them through certain situations. I’m of course glad that this is the case, because we give it back in a way, but I don’t have the illusion that if we not had been there that there wouldn’t have been something else. People always search for a certain connection to something that can ‘heal’ or go on with live.
You’re on the road for such a long time now. So when you started at the very beginning, did you ever think about getting that big and becoming one of the most successful Dutch acts of all time?
No, because in Holland… when you say you’re a musician and somebody doesn’t know you they’ll ask you ‘what’s your profession?’ Then you say ‘well, I’m a musician’ and they’ll ask ‘and what’s your real job then?’ But we also never got any fundings for touring outside Holland, which a lot of bands from other countries get. Of course I did have a dream when I was a child. I was always dreaming and thinking about music, and I was always making music. We always tried to have our education beside that. We all studied, we all graduated our studies and after that we had regular jobs and WITHIN TEMPTATION was our hobby-band when we started. So how cool it is that we can do our passion.
WITHIN TEMPTATION – Photo by Patric Ullaeus
When you started with WITHIN TEMPTATION your music was darker and harder…
Well, I don’t think so. It was a different way of making music. It was called more ‘doom metal’ by people at this time. But our latest album, Hydra, is probably the heaviest album we have made so far. For us it’s the heaviest album which took us about two years to write, record and produce it.
WITHIN TEMPTATION‘s new album Hydra features collaborations with Howard Jones, Xzibit, Tarja, and Dave Pirner
How did the collaborations that are on Hydra come up?
We had the songs ready and were thinking about the perfect scenarios for the songs. So we were also thinking about possible collaborations. Then we had Tarja, Dave Pirner, XZIBIT, Howard Jones…actually the fun thing is that we got everybody we wanted to have on Hydra. It was cool to do, because they liked the songs and we said to ourselves ‘yes, cool!’ (laughing) And with XZIBIT we had a certain vision how wanted to have this rap combined with the song and it took us a lot of time until we had the right song for it. We had written a lot of songs and took hiphop tracks from the internet and just put it on the songs to see if it might work somehow. A lot of times it didn’t work, but we finally found a song that it did work with. Then we were thinking about which rapper would fit, and we thought XZIBIT would be ideal for it, because his low voice is a really nice contrast to my voice. So the song became even darker due to the combination.
How was working with Howard Jones, the former KILLSWITCH ENGAGE singer?
Well, we never met him in person. We met him on Skype and talked about everything, sadly we never shook hands by now. He’s a really nice guy and he told that he knows us already since a lot of years. So maybe we should have asked him years earlier. (laughing)
What do ‘hope’ and ‘passion’ mean to you?
That connects somehow together. I think with passion there’s hope. If you’re passionate about something people will embrace it somehow, because it’s a pure kind of emotion. We had a passion for music and we were always hoping for bigger stages. Not in the way that we always wanted to have it bigger, bigger, bigger, but in the way that there would be an audience for us that we can express ourselves to and do our thing and our love for music. So we were always hoping that our passion wouldn’t be senseless.