GUN/Roadrunner Records (2007)
If the catchcry for Hollywood franchise movies is Kathleen Kennedy by way of South Park’s Cartman, “Put a chick in it, make her lame and gay,” radio-ready metal’s mantra in the mid-2000s was “put a chick in it, make her goth yet pretty.” Arch Enemy’s flash in the popular consciousness - omg its a chick who growlz wtf - was just that. A blink and you’ll miss it phenomenon. A trend that skirted the mainstream but never seemed to break all the way through.
Female-fronted metal was piecemeal in the late 1990s, with the Europeans and Canadians leading the charge. Nightwish, After Forever, Kittie, Otep, and Within Temptation. Of course, no one gave a shit until 2003, when American goth-adjacent pop-metallers Evanescence dropped their multi-platinum Fallen, obliterating the nu-metal boys’ armies just as that trend was in full commercial retreat.
Believe it or not, in all its maudlin and weepy glory My Immortal was a Top 10 hit. This is when singles were still sold in actual stores. #1 in Canada, Greece, and Portugal, as well as the US Rock & Metal charts. It swept charts across Europe and America too; it hit #4 in Australia. It was fucking everywhere. Their riffy songs, like Going Under also charted in the worldwide Top 40. So big labels scrambled to get one of their own Evanesences before the fad well, evanesced.
Luckily for top-of-their game Roadrunner Records, they locked eyes on an equally bankable goth yet pretty female-fronted band they could exploit, namely Nightwish. Yes, the darlings who set their top-hatted sympho-gothery at Wacken Open Air in 2000 and were wholly embraced by metaldom as the little Finns that could were now taking a tilt at the mainstream. 2004’s Once was sitting beside Avril Lavigne and Destiny’s Child albums in teenage girl bedrooms, much to the chagrin of teenage boys like me.
With songs like Nemo peaking at #1 in Finland and Hungary as well as scraping into the US Rock & Metal Top 5, it would seem their €1 million production, video, and marketing investment was plentifully returned. Thank god for that plinky plonky hook, right? If that doesn’t pan out, put some beats in it and shove it up UK clackers instead. Which they did. Subsequent single I Wish I Had an Angel posting a #60 on the UK singles chart, their best ever result in that market.
Released later in the year, Within Temptation’sThe Silent Force peaked at #8 in the US Rock & Metal Chart, did well in Europe, and took out #3 in Finland and #1 in The Netherlands. Just like Nightwish produced pensive Goth Anime Music Video fodder, it too won the hearts and acclaim of teenage girls. Sort of. Sharon del Adel’s delicate voice of glass occupied a different sort of spirit vessel than mezzo-soprano opera-enthusiast Tarja Turunen - and vocalist Sharon del Adel didn’t mind the weird goth shit because, well, Within Temptation was kinda born that way in the first place. However their pop-orientation didn’t go down as well with fans and casual ears.
Though unacknowledged at the time, the struggle for Goth-pop dominance was real between Nightwish and Within Temptation, the Dutch behemoths playing second fiddle to these diminutive Finns. (You ever seen Emppu Vuorinen on stage? He’s fucking tiny.)
One saving grace for Nightwish, avoiding total accusations of selling out, was that they stuck to their symphonic, grandiose metal guns. Almost immediately upon release, Ghost Love Score gained adoration from across the metal world; ten minutes of epic Hollywood-score pomp and ceremony on the level of Hallowed Be Thy Name or the recently released …And Then There Was Silence. Deride Once all you like; it still had genre-definitive heavy metal tracks on it. The Silent Force, not so much. So if that didn’t work, do whatever the hell you want instead. Which they seemed to do on The Heart of Everything.
Within Temptation are teenagers of the eighties - now husband and wife, guitarist Robert Westerholt and Sharon, bonded amid a mutual love for Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal - and it shines through on Heart. They didn’t start as rock stars pining for stardom. Robert worked as a Human Resources manager; Sharon in the fashion industry, which partly explains her many, many on-stage haute couture costume changes.
Even their Evanescent balladry is more Steinman by way of Bonnie Tyler (something AllMusic picked up on) - strong, empowered, spirited; not crying their mascara off in a bedroom corner. Cue Frozen, a semi-ballad about child abuse:
It made the Top 10 Mega Rock 50 (#7) in the Netherlands and charted over the borders in France and Germany. Remember, we’re talking about a metal band here. Unless you’re Greek and weird, you don’t really chart all that well. At all. The fact they were charting at all was a surprise, considering their humble origins.
Speaking to Metal Hammer in 2007, just after the release of The Heart of Everything, Robert said:
“We’ve never really been hoping for any of this,” [...] “The fact is we started this as a hobby band, so that’s meant we’ve tried things really slowly. We have more solid ground which makes you less insecure. We’ve always had the time to develop ourselves, not to be hungry for success but to just go as far as we can and see where it ends. We’ve gone from country to country and step by step.”
“It all happened in a very natural way for us,” Sharon said. “It’s just been the next label, the next big festival, it didn’t happen overnight for us. It’s been ten years, so for us it just hasn’t been a shock. And we prefer it this way.”
The album was ripe with singles. What Have You Done with Life of Agony vocalist Keith (now Mina) Caputo in duet with Sharon is a total Roxette homage; punky, punchy guitars punctuating calls and returns that tickles the ear of any millennial who grew up on school drop-off breakfast radio. It sticks out, because their label insisted upon it, rather than the band. Labels were hoping their rockier songs would get new fans through the door and have them sit down long enough for the greater symphonic metal show to unfold.
Some reviewers were lamenting their shift from being Euro-centric to placating the ugh! Americans. Mark Gromen of Bloody Words and Bloody Knuckles said a proper North American release will unleash the unfair Evanescence comparisons, writing “If entitled [sic] to only one track to give the uninitiated an accurate portrayal of what Within Temptation are all about, try Our Solemn Hour… Grandiose, orchestral and rocking, it encompasses all aspects of the band.”
I’d go one further and add The Cross to that list; the track that comes closest to reviving their classic ethereal and whimsical Mother Earth sound. Likewise the semi-acoustic ballad All I Need, showcasing del Adel’s magnificent range and orchestras backing her in full bloom.
Before long, we come to the Ghost Love Score killer, The Truth Beneath The Rose. Coming in at a nail over seven minutes, choirs and strings swirling like a gathering gale, guitars crashing in and striding through at full gallop as del Adel’s porcelain voice soars above it all. "Forgive me for what I have been” she croons, as a digital duplicate punches through with Forgive me my sins!
As she falls through eternity with gossamer oohs and aahs, it captivates with a reflective middle-8, the kind that moody girls would use as cryptic MSN Messenger statuses (What’s the matter? I don’t want to talk about it!) or MySpace top song placements. Which is fine, because at the heart of everything, the record (and the band) is about fantasy escapism.
Metal Hammer, in the interview, wrote “[a]s they explain, Within Temptation is about defying reality and providing themselves and their fans with a respite from life rather than a reflection of it […] To Robert and Sharon, Within Temptation is simultaneously an unexpected career and a place in the imaginary ether where even their own lives play second-fiddle to their lofty imagination.”
Which in this day and age is something metal has almost forgotten about. Thanks for nothing, America. Is it their best album? In terms of being the “most Within Temptation thing Within Temptation have done,” then yes. Once worthy of many a spin - and then some.