WITHIN TEMPTATION have not been shy about where they stand. "Wireless" and the title track of 2023's "Bleed Out" put the war in Ukraine and the death of Mahsa Amini — the Iranian woman detained for not wearing a hijab — directly into the band's songs. In a new interview with Germany's Sonic Seducer, vocalist Sharon den Adel was asked whether artists have a responsibility to reflect what is happening in the world.
Her answer starts a very long way back. "I think since the beginning of time, there were bards, and they were telling the news from other countries while they were traveling. That's what musicians did ages and ages and ages ago," she said. "And I think if you look at the '60s, there was a lot of politics there. You have Bob Dylan. You had so many bands."
She stopped short of calling it an obligation. "I don't think it's a responsibility per se. I think using your platform for something you really believe in is still a way of art, and I think there's a lot of politics in art. And I feel really good by doing it because it gives me an extra meaning to what I do. And I think — I'm hoping, I'm hoping that there is someone out there who will feel that message for them, and they can relate to it, and they find hope in it. That's what we hope to do with music also, is to translate our emotions and hope that other people will receive it."
Asked whether current events have changed how the band writes, den Adel did not soften it. "The daily events nowadays, of course, the world's gone crazy, and then the unimaginable is happening right now again," she said. "Of course, it will be an inspiration for our music, because it affects everyone in the world. They always say the world's always big, and what happens in America, what happens in China will not affect us because it's so far from our bed. But I think everybody has realized now that the world isn't such a big place. Yeah, it's coming very close to all of us, and it influences us all."
The Dutch band has eight studio albums behind it and more than four million records sold, with a trophy cabinet that includes a World Music Award, MTV Europe Music Awards and a Metal Hammer Award. Before "Bleed Out" they moved away from album cycles entirely in favour of standalone singles, which is part of why the political material arrived as quickly as it did — there was nothing to wait for.