Second Look: Within Temptation - The Heart of Everything

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.

Second Look: Noumena - Absence

Spikefarm Records (2005)

2004-2005 for melodic death heads was a bit uneven. Especially if you were splashing cash on imports (like I was, and still fucking am.) For the hardcore In Flames oldies, Soundtrack to Your Escape was relegated to "coaster tier" pretty damn quick, written off as trite cash-grabby garbage. Doomsday Machine by Arch Enemy was a decent effort, although lacking that grittier twin-lead panache that defined their barnstorming rise at the end of the last millenium. Dark Tranquillity hulked into heavier territory on Character, jettisoning much of the goth influence of the past three or so records - a great platter nonetheless. Fellow Swedes Darkane's Layers of Lies shored up the harder, more straightforward melodic death on offer, while Soilwork's Stabbing The Drama was flirting with metalcore, buying her drinks, and taking her home at the end of the night. Scar Symmetry debuted their sci-fi melodeath weirdness this year, too. Of course, Insomnium was fast racing into view with Since The Day It All Came Down, an impressive turn on folky melodic death, the template for the masterpiece that was to come.

So why did everyone seem to sleep on Finns Noumena and their second album Absence, possibly one of the best, if not the best melodic death releases of 2005? How on earth did they follow it up with something equally as impressive a year later (Anatomy of Life) and sweep themselves into obscurity for almost a decade after? Huh?

When End of the Century proudly struts its mammoth chops in the first thirty seconds or so of this incredible melodeath record, it's easy to think - "Ahh, the record In Flames SHOULD have made after Clayman." You'd be hard pressed to think this wasn't Colony or Clayman II, Anders Friden replaced by an hirsute, ursine Finn toiling in the darkness of lower registers. A jig-like folk melody dances through fields of big, clashing riffs before halting for a noodly lead break that, upon closer inspection, Bjorn Gelotte or Jesper Stromblad had absolutely nothing to do with.

Hear also the reverbed acoustic intro of Slain Memories, a near clone of In Flames’ Square Nothing, though after the intro it departs for a completely opposite destination, all sad female vocals instead of bloody knuckled riffs. It's so easy to write this off as In Flames forgery - and my brain desperately is clamouring for me to do it - but it stands idle in mute defiance. I will not talk shit about this song - nor the record. That's despite reviewers growing tired, so tired of the melodic death craze after a near decade in the sun.

MetalStorm.net said "While the whole Melodic/Gothenburg Death Metal craze seems to be wearing off, there are some bands attempting to achieve success playing such genre [sic.]. [It's] a great genre with many good assets, and many hindrances also, like the repetitiveness, lack of innovation, false creativity and many more, and what else you could expect from a genre that spawns hundreds of bands each year?

Nowadays I don't think there's a band that's going to reinvent Melodeath. It's a genre that reached its peak [...] Nowadays we have the leftovers of a genre that already gave the best of itself, one of the results of the cathartic act is Noumena." High praise indeed, considering.

Absence arrived about a year before Amorphis revamped itself with Eclipse. Bouncy Finnish folk melodies wouldn't become synonymous with Amorphis until that album dropped, at least from what I can remember. Didn’t stop Metal-Archives.com nerds from making the comparison, though. I might play Eclipse to some friends and chuck All Veiled somewhere in there and see if anyone notices.*

Second track Everlasting Ward pairs Maiden gallop and jaunty frostbitten melody and serves it up with a side of bowel-gurgling growls AND plaintive cleans. One has to wonder why Amorphis endured and these guys didn't. To make an outstanding album one (ideally) throws out the rulebook. These melodies wouldn't feel out of place on a cheese-filled power metal record. However they aren't worked to absolute death, but as a basis for constructing thoughtful, almost poignant songs around them. They even brought back female cleans, thought extinct after Dark Tranquillity’s Projector or In Flames Whoracle. Prey of the Tempter heaps every passe melodeath trope (low-end riffs, clean vocals, staccato rhythms, baroque-cribbed melodies) into a barrel until they’ve spun it clean of cliche. Then it comes out sounding a bit like Sentenced, which isn’t altogether a bad thing. They have this knack beginning with the familiar and taking you somewhere completely foreign by the start of the first verse, like another acoust-introed The Dream and The Escape. seething with the fury of Dark Tranquillity’s earlier thrashier fare.

On paper, this all sounds unoriginal and derivative. I promise you - in reality, it’s far greater than the sum of its parts. Although prices for the disc itself are eyewateringly astronomical, give this a “spin” on the streaming service of your choice. You’ll walk away changed.

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*I have like one friend that would sit through an entire metal album with me, and he would definitely fucking notice.