WITHIN TEMPTATION

THE KNOWLEDGE

From helping draw up the blueprint for a whole new genre, to the romantic split that nearly tore the band apart, Sharon den Adel looks back on the history of the symphonic metal pioneers

WORDS: PAUL TRAVERS

PRESS/TIM TRONCKOE

Sharon den Adel laughs a lot as she speaks. She makes for entertaining company and seems to exude both a calm, confident air and an overwhelmingly positive attitude. She looks to be on the verge of tears, however, as she recalls the UK tour that was her worst ever moment in Within Temptation, the band she co-founded with her high school sweetheart, husband-to-be, songwriting partner and guitarist Robert Westerholt.

The pair had been the beating heart of the band since its inception in 1996, but the pressures of burgeoning success and combining a simultaneous romantic and working relationship had simply become too much.

It was 2007, and their fourth album, The Heart Of Everything, had propelled them to worldwide success. It debuted at No.1 in the Netherlands, making it their second album to top the charts in their homeland, but they had also broken into the US Billboard charts for the first time. The record was widely seen as a pinnacle of symphonic metal, and it paved the way for a major world tour. Behind the scenes, though, things had reached an impasse.

“We had America done, and then a European tour, and it was terrible,” Sharon recalls. “The tour wasn’t terrible, we had a lot of success, but [Robert and I] were not in a good place together. Eventually we broke up and we still had to go through England. And that was the worst tour ever, because we had already split up and still had to do it.

It was agony, but I think the audience loved it, because I never had so much passion as at that time. I was just screaming it all out!”

The period nearly saw the end of Within Temptation, but the pair decided there was a lot worth salvaging, in both musical and personal terms. They set about redefining how they could work and live together, and the band continued to cement their ongoing position as one of Europe’s most successful metal bands.

Worldwide arena tours and chart-topping albums seemed a long way away when the members of Within Temptation first got together in the small town of Waddinxveen in South Holland. Sharon was a grunge kid who was singing in a band project in school. Schoolmate Robert Westerholt, meanwhile, had a series of ‘proper’ bands, and Sharon was happy to jump in when the singer of one of them skipped one too many sessions. After morphing through a few more versions, Within Temptation were born, and they quickly began work on their 1997 debut album, Enter.