(warning: this blogger is high on water. Read at own risk.)
So Within Temptation is like, the best thing to ever happen to me.
(Apart from a C-section about twenty years back which was probably actually the best thing ever to happen, though not to me. But something).
But yes: Within Temptation. They’re a Dutch band that formed in the late 90s and started writing sellable music in the early 2000s. Like most bands, they’ve done the awkward slide around a couple of interrelated genres, trying to find their footing; right now, they’re sitting somewhere between symphonic metal and symphonic rock. So lots of drumming and guitar riffing, intermingled with the good old sounds of a probably-synthetic violin section.
In terms of comparisons to something more mainstream, they share similar elements with Evanescence. They have the same overtone of angst, and Amy Lee (Evanescence) and Sharon den Adel (Within Temptation) both have the same ethereal mezzo-soprano thing going on. And both singers and groups inspired equal amounts of envy and love in me from about the age of thirteen.
But where I’ve largely moved on from Evanescence (save for the really angsty rainy days where I’m feeling solidly sixteen again), Within Temptation has…well, stuck around. I bought their new album earlier this year, and have had the CD on in the car for a solid month at least.
For me the major difference is almost completely encapsulated in one of their songs (no, I swear this is not as lame as it sounds). The song Hand of Sorrow from WT’s fourth album, The Heart of Everything, popped up in my life about a month after I’d finished the Farseer Trilogy, by fantasy author Robin Hobb. Both song and book were thematically similar and inspired equal amounts of feels within me.
It took me a couple of months to drift onto the song’s Wikipedia page and find out that the song was actually based off of the book series. Which meant that all those layers of narrative I was casually imposing on the song like gender roles on a baby were…actually valid. I was actually feeling the right feels; and they weren’t the I’m seventeen and life sucks feels; they were the I’m totally an orphaned bastard assassin with a shitty life and a shittier destiny feels.
So basically, WT has stuck around for me because not only do they feed my inner angst baby, their songs are actually really rich with all the epic fantasy that I used to read and no longer have time to. They feed my delusion that my angst isn’t just about flirting with boys and kissing girls and cleaning my room; it’s about deep things like saving the world from AntiChrists, fighting in a zombie apocalypse and nobly giving up love for the cosmic good.
…Also – hey, the music’s not bad, either.
atarian izarra 