Late to the Within Temptation party? Don’t panic, we’ve got you. Here’s your essential guide to The Netherlands’ biggest metal band.
The Album(s)
Until you can get your mitts on new record Resist, 2007’s The Heart Of Everything provides a nice middle-ground between the symphonic-heavy, grandiose sounds of their earlier material and what would come after. That said, its follow-up, 2011’s The Unforgiving, is flawless, the band dialling up their rockier influences to produce an opus stacked with single-worthy earworms.
The Song
They’ve amassed an impressive array of big-hitters across their two decades in the game, but it’s still hard to look past Ice Queen – the epic, guitars, piano, horns-and-all monster from 2000 breakthrough Mother Earth – as the definitive symphonic metal anthem. Eighteen years on, it still sounds like it could soundtrack the hordes of Mordor going ham on each other in the snowy ’scapes of Narnia.
The Video
While the album didn’t quite turn out to be what Within Temptation were striving for, 2014’s Hydra still packed some huge moments – not least lead single Paradise (What About Us?), featuring former Nightwish singer Tarja Turunen. The song slays, and the high-concept, post-apocalyptic video accompanying it proved to be their biggest clip ever – 50million pairs of eyeballs can’t be wrong.
The Live Show
Within Temptation’s live shows continue to become as famously epic as their music. We’re still hoping to see one of their legendary Black Xmas shows hit the UK, but in the meantime, you could do a lot worse than check out their Let Us Burn DVD – featuring two huge live performances stacked with props, pyro, special effects and even a full orchestra. Now that they’re going Full Sci-Fi, hell knows what they’ll come up with next...
Within Temptation are on the cover of the latest Metal Hammer, revealing the struggle and turmoil that nearly led to the implosion of the band and new album Resist. Order your copy now.
