In a world seemingly ablaze with multiple wars, political divides, and contentious societal issues, expressing opinions openly has become challenging due to deep divisions. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the global landscape has been marred by a relentless stream of chaos and back-to-back horrors. However, amid the prevailing sense of doom and gloom, a narrative exists beyond the glass-half-empty perspective. Amidst the turmoil lies the potential for unity through exploring divergent opinions, leveraging today’s advanced technological tools, and fostering a sense of optimism. While grappling with the weight of current events, many turn to creative outlets to articulate their thoughts and angst, and this is precisely where Within Temptation steps in. Known initially as a Dutch symphonic metal outfit, Within Temptation recently collided with Evanescence for a long-anticipated tour, marking a significant moment in their career. With roots nearly three decades deep, the band initially enchanted audiences with fantasy-styled tunes on albums like The Silent Force and the iconic Mother Earth. However, a subtle shift in their musical landscape emerged, possibly starting in 2014 with Hydra and continuing through 2019’s Resist, ultimately shaping the band’s present identity.

Remarkably active during the pause imposed by the pandemic, Within Temptation released a series of singles, hosted an Instagram concert, and even ventured into the realm of a virtual reality performance. As 2023 draws towards a close, the band presented Bleed Out, arguably their most powerful, daring, and socially relevant album to date. An independent release, Bleed Out, signifies a departure from traditional record labels, showcasing the band’s commitment to creating music that resonates with the current state of the world. Metal Insider recently had a profound conversation with Within Temptation’s vocalist, Sharon den Adel. An optimist on our future, while brave and authentic, she shared her perspectives mentioned in the album while also hitting upon subjects of artificial intelligence and the profound impact of creating meaningful music. 

What inspired the writing process for the new album Bleed Out?

In the beginning, it was primarily social subjects about things happening in society here in Europe, things that I came across while watching the news, and stuff like that. That was during the pandemic, and then we released songs throughout the pandemic to keep in touch with fans and also for ourselves too, well, to stay mentally healthy, have something to do while we were at home, and also to keep busy and do something fun. When the pandemic passed, I was in the studio, and the war broke out in the Ukraine. That inspired us a lot. We were very much in shock because we never thought that something like this would ever happen again in 2023, so many years after the Second World War. After all, it’s from a different magnitude than other wars, which are just as horrible, of course. However, Russia is a superpower, and trying to invade a smaller country like a sovereign country like Ukraine was a big shock.

The Ukraine is like Kiev is for us, a two-and-a-half hour flight only from Amsterdam. So that’s how close that war is. And yeah, it was a huge shock, and also other things happening, a lot of things happened during the last few years that we have released an album, going from American politics that has a lot effect on the rest of the world. Whatever has been decided in America does affect the rest of the world, which we can see as well. On the other hand, politics here in Europe, for instance, Poland, has just now had elections. They had a right-wing government the last few years. They changed a lot of laws, and that’s also what inspired me to write certain songs because, for instance, they banned sex education in schools, which resulted in more people being pregnant, and at the same time, also banning abortion. Now, I know there’s a lot of diversity and many opinions about the subject of abortion. It’s not like I’m pro or against it, but it is just the idea that there’s nobody who does an abortion for fun. Of course, if someone would like to have one, it’s for a good reason. But even in the case of rape or incest, it’s not possible in Poland, and that’s Europe. I did an essay for Korean music in the corona time, and I investigated the differences between countries concerning the subject abortion, and that was very different. I felt shocked about the results I got that I didn’t know of because I thought we would be more unified.

We have a ban on abortion in Poland, but in my country, it’s very liberal. Reading all these opinions and writing an essay about that was a thing. It was for International Women’s Day, but I made an end conclusion, and the end conclusion for me was freedom for the individual is, for me, the most important thing. I don’t believe that anyone who wants an abortion does that. It’s always for a good reason. And not having the option is heavy, in my opinion. I believe in individual freedom, so the choice to make your own decision and also to live with your own decision that you’ve made, because that’s the consequence of things like subjects like this, is you have to carry that decision with you the rest of your life. So it’s a decision that’s not easily made, and I’m pro-liberalization for that subject. So personal decisions and personal freedom is, for me, the most important thing in life. So that inspired me to write, for instance, a song like “Don’t Pray for Me.” And also seeing the resistance in Iran against a regime that oppresses mostly women but also a whole new generation. We were also inspired by those brave individuals who stood up against their regime, and we were inspired by such bravery, and we wrote, “Bleed Out,” the song about that situation.

It’s very disheartening knowing that moving forward with the latest events happening in the world, it just feels like the world is on fire. We’re going in different eras of time now. We’re back in the ’70s with women’s rights, and then we’re in the future with robots. Are they going to take over with artificial intelligence? What is happening in this world right now is crazy, and you just nailed every single thing with what you just said, and it’s terrifying. And yes, people don’t understand the situation behind a woman and their decision. It could be life-threatening for somebody, where they won’t survive to term and who’s going to watch their other kids. There are so many reasons, along with rape, incest, and trauma. And to put that into music is very brave. Especially with everyone being so divided today. How does it feel to release it for your listeners?

We had, of course, some backlash here and there about certain things we said or did with videos. In the end, it all contributes to the discussion of what kind of world we want to live in. And that’s actually what our aim has been. It’s not disrespectful to anyone, but more like we want to have this discussion because, like you said, the world is on fire. In the positive sense, there’s momentum right now, more than ever, and we’re willing to talk about what we think is the right way to go forward. Sometimes, the world needs to be on fire to get to a different way of thinking and bravely decide to do things differently. And that can be on every topic that we have just been addressing. Even our fans’ reactions are divided, and I understand that also. But the difference between where we are living in America and here in Europe, contrary to Iran or Russia, for instance, is that they aren’t even allowed to do that, and we can talk with each other. As long as we do it in a way that we keep on listening, although we are from different worlds or views, we can go forward. I always have hope, but it does feel, like you said, like the world’s on fire, and I hope it goes the right way instead of getting even worse.

It’s true. You have the creative freedom that not everybody feels like they have, and it’s great to put the point out there. I appreciate your optimism. We’ve been through a lot, from the pandemic to facing multiple wars. It’s scary. Circling back to the pandemic, when you did the self-release singles, how did it connect with the fans during that time?

That was received pretty positively, also because we didn’t know how long the pandemic was going to last, and we were very positive also then like, “Oh, this won’t take more than a year, or maybe a half year, or maybe just a few months.” We were still like, “Oh, this is another, okay, it’s going to be another time that we will be at home again.” So it was really tough for many people, especially since we didn’t have a garden or a place to go outside of your house, which a lot of people didn’t have in the Netherlands because we are a very small country. We have a lot of flats and apartment buildings, and only some have a garden. In certain parts of the Netherlands, we do. So there’s a lot of concrete we have as well. For those who couldn’t go outside and be outside, that was the hardest for everyone else, and they also felt cut off from the world.

And then to have music, it became, I think, the realization for a lot of people that how important music is, but culture in general that just to be able to go out with each other, to meet other people, to be among other humans, that’s essential for our social behavior and our feeling of security and so many other things. The appreciation for music was suddenly even bigger than normal, also from us as musicians. Like, okay, finally, we can do something different. We can actually make music and forget our problems for a little while. Our fans also had something to look forward to. It was a win-win situation for both sides. In the end, the pandemic took so long that we released so many more singles than we actually wanted to, but because we just wanted to keep people engaged. And also for us, like I said, we wanted to stay busy, and we even did a virtual reality show at some points, which was also cool to do. It took a lot of months to make that. Only some people realize that because making something like that takes a lot of work. But then again, technology can be nice as well. We were happy that we were able to do that as well. So yeah, it was perceived most definitely positively.

And during that time, it inspired you to become more of an independent band away from record labels. What made you move forward without the traditional label approach?

Well, before the pandemic, we decided that we wanted to do more in-the-moment kind of releases, like when something is happening in the world. You accidentally write a song about it and want to release it around that time. Otherwise, when it ends up on an album two or three years later, the whole subject is already in nobody’s mind anymore, and it feels outdated. So we wanted to release more in the moment. We told our record company just before, well, at the beginning of the end of 2019, I think it was, and they said, “Well, we can’t do that because we’re a traditional record company, and we just want to do three maximum singles in total, and then the album as we’ve always done.” And we said, “Well, that’s not how we want to do it anymore,” because if needed, we want to do things differently. And so we parted because of that reason. It was the best decision ever, especially with everything that came towards us with the pandemic, that we were able to do so much more than we had been able to do if we were still with a record company because we would have been, well, we needed to have that fight, of course, with them to release more. They were just not able to do that. Luckily for us, we were free when the pandemic started, and we were learning to fly while we did it. What resulted in a conclusion is that we want to release a little bit more than we did with a record company, but not as many as we did now because we released seven songs. Yeah, something like that. Seven. That’s quite a lot.

Yeah, no, that is, compared to the usual style. What I like about you guys is that you work with technology. I understand with AI and everything, it could be scary with it replacing jobs, but there are theories where you have to work with it to move forward. So how was it to incorporate AI technology, say in your video for “Ritual,” that gave the horror-style experience?

Well, it was mainly fun to try something new for us because when we saw the person we were working with, a French man, Ralph Bakshi, we had never seen anything like he did. It went viral on TikTok, and we talked to the director of our videos, trying to talk about what we would do next. And then he showed us this video. He said, did you see this? I just got it in this morning and want to show it to you guys. This is the next level. He was also very worried about it. Like, “Okay, I’m going to lose a lot of clients because of this,” and well, we said, “Now knowing this, we want to do this. We want to work with this guy and see if he can work with us, but we don’t want to lose you either. We want to combine it. Maybe you can transition towards AI with the clients you’re going to have right now, but then do something different, but then implement the AI in a certain way into your process of recording videos.”

And we first tried it out with a visualizer, without a band or anything; it’s mainly computer-generated video. But it’s also done by us because we were working together with this French man to make this visualizer, putting in words and deciding what kind of atmosphere it should have, or how it should look like, more or less. But AI never does what you want it to do. So, we also learned that there’s so much more to talk about. People say, “Oh, just put some words, and something comes out.” It’s actually quite some work if you have a specific storyline in mind. It never does the storyline by itself. No. You have to constantly be active and reactive to what AI is making because it gives you four options every time. But then what happened, for instance, we had soldiers in our video of the visualizer, and all of a sudden, Darth Vader was walking and marching along those soldiers. And like, “What is Darth Vader doing there?” We had to cut it out. It was constant. Then, things change within a few seconds; faces are already changing. First, it’s open; then it’s completely bloody, and also, helmets turning into mushrooms. We said, “We don’t want to have the mushrooms. It looks ridiculous,” but that’s what AI does. Sometimes, they had three hands instead of two, like a certain person in the video. It was crazy. So, AI is still premature, but I agree with people that it can be dangerous. AI, but it’s not because of the jobs. You should see this as the new industrial revolution. It’s like back when machines and factories replaced people, and we got new jobs because of it, but differently.

And some people had to go back to school again, do different things differently, or maybe even find different jobs. But that is also a sign of the times we have to evolve. It’s already out there like the genie’s out of the bottle; you can’t put it back in, and then we have to adapt. As a band, we also had to adapt from cassettes to CDs to streaming, and many bands couldn’t make it anymore because they just didn’t earn enough money to keep on going. We have had to adapt to many things that have changed over time. This is just another thing. But having said that, what’s a pity is that lawmaking is always behind technology. Where it is when you have medicine, for instance, nowadays, it has to be tested a thousand times before it can be brought on the market for people to take that medicine. But if you have technology which can also have a significant influence on mental health and other things also used in the wrong way, maybe fake videos or about news, fake news, you would think that if a company develops a technology like that, it should be going through a test case of some kind. Somebody needs to test that before it comes to the rest of society, in my opinion, a little bit, because don’t we test everything, more or less, like food and everything? Why don’t we test technology because it’s a new thing? And then we can also make lawmaking upfront instead of always later than when it’s already out there and with some nasty consequences.

That is an excellent outlook. More testing should be done with all of this stuff. It’s a mix of an opinion. Again, I appreciate you guys adapting to the times and evolving. It’s a great example of what all of us humans should be doing, learning to adapt to it, whether we like it or not. And for fun, since “Ritual” is more of a horror video inspired by From Dusk Till Dawn, what is your favorite vampire-themed horror film?

Whoa. Well, probably From Dust Till Dawn. It’s more the boys in the band that really like horror, but I do like the vampire kind of videos, the stories and books, and all kinds of movies. Interview with the Vampire: I was a huge fan of that. And, of course, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is among my favorite movies. It inspired us a lot throughout the years. But nowadays, it’s more about real subjects. So this video is, like the song, a fun track, and we had so much fun making this because it’s over the top. We like Halloween; our kids always love to dress up, and they’re getting a little bit older right now, so the whole Halloween theme is huge at my house.

So although we don’t have that tradition, of course, but it’s getting bigger in our country every year. There’s even one city called Zuidermeer, which is entirely in Halloween style for at least a week, I think. So it’s getting bigger here as well, although we don’t have that tradition, of course. But it is something cool to do, and it’s a nice genre. So for us, it was fun to make this video and also the lyrics. Of course, it touches certain subjects again that are very, in this moment, like the soccer player, soccer coach, I mean, kissing the woman player on her mouth, which was a huge, huge kind of thing in Spain and all over Europe, I guess. It was a huge discussion. Did he do wrong or not? And we implemented that in the video. But the Bleed Out and Ritual videos were shot with real actors, the bands, and the complete crew of people that generally also work on our video.

We filmed the complete video as usual with our previous videos but then got it through AI afterward. It’s just fun to try something new. It felt a bit boring and outdated to do the same thing every time. And with this video, people do like it, but sometimes, and I think they like it because of the fact it’s something new again, something that hasn’t been done that much. And of course when time passes, there will be more bands doing this as well, which is logical because it gives you more freedom to do different things in a new way again. The tool is, let’s hope there will be lawmaking and how far and what way we can use it and we cannot use it. Making these videos also raises the debate on that. Okay, let’s keep talking about what we want because the laws still need to be made. We can all have this discussion. By doing so, making this a video, and also other people working with AI and seeing the positive things you can do with AI, meaning medically, people will remain open-minded about AI. It’s not all bad out there. And I think, yeah, it’s good to have this discussion.

No, it’s awesome. I could talk to you for hours about this, but now that the album is out, what’s next for Within Temptation?

Well, we are going on tour to South America in April. We haven’t been there in 10 years, so it’s really nice to go back, especially because it’s the first time that we’re going to do festivals as well. I’m really looking forward to that. We’re going to work in the meantime before that happens. Before April, we will work on a new stage setup for the new tour, which starts next year in October. That seems very far away, but it’s also because we have been ongoingly riding, producing, touring, and all that since COVID ended. We need a break a little bit before everything starts again, and in the meantime, maybe even write a few new songs if we have the inspiration. But we have been in a good flow lately, so I’m really looking forward to those kinds of things. And yeah, I really want to make something new and special again.

Keep doing what you’re doing with the independent route. Keep speaking up about what you believe and stand for, and don’t be afraid, and keep evolving with technology.

Well, that’s very sweet. I’m really happy that you see it that way, because, like I said, we had some other reactions and I’m really happy to find there’s also people who look at this in a positive way. I do think it’s important too, for artists in general or in every way, if you’re making all kinds of art, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t have to be music, but to keep on talking about things that are happening in our society. Yeah, it keeps on being important.