Dutch metal act WITHIN TEMPTATION are back with a brand new album, “Bleed Out,” which was released on October 20th, 2023. We chatted with vocalist Sharon den Adel and guitarist Stefan Helleblad in Helsinki about the new album. Watch the interview here or read the full transcript below…
Thank you so much for taking the time to travel down here. I hope your trip to Helsinki was great.
Sharon: So far, it’s been good.
Stefan: Yes.
Sharon: It was awesome. Best ever.
Behind you is the exhibition of the Helsinki Photo Festival, which I thought was interesting because it fits quite well with the themes on your record. Did you have a chance to see anything?
Sharon: I saw there were pictures, but I haven’t been able to check it out because we’ve been constantly talking. So yeah. Maybe, later if we have a minute.
The photo behind you is from somebody from the Netherlands. So that’s pretty cool! Anyway, you’re releasing your new album, “Bleed Out,” next Friday, and with it, the final tracks that fans haven’t heard yet. How excited are you guys that it’s going to be finally out?
Stefan: Definitely excited, it’s going to be fun to see the reactions.
Sharon: Also because today, we’re going to do a listening session with fans for the whole album, so to get a preview or a pre-listening to the album. What’s nice about it is that people will talk about the complete album because now that it has been fragmented into songs, of course, all over three years, to have the final few songs together, it will give the complete picture that we wanted to tell actually, so I think it’s good that they can hear the full-length album in one go, yeah.
You’re talking about the fan event today in Helsinki. I was wondering whether that’s something you actively do, especially since you’re quite big these days.
Sharon: It’s nice to reach out to all the biggest fans apparently, or maybe the people that can come of course. It’s just fun doing it here and there. Some of these previews things, we’re going to do one in England, we’re going to do it here in Finland but also in the Netherlands, and some other countries as well.
Yes, it’s cool when bands are still connected with their fans on such an intimate level.
Sharon: It’s old-fashioned, but it works.
Most of the songs on the album have been released as singles. While getting into listening to the record, I was worried that it might sound like a collection of songs, rather than an album. But it became clear to me that you spent so much time on creating a perfect flow and listening experience, so it made me wonder how difficult it was for you to change to an approach like this when you are more used to the traditional way of releasing singles and albums.
Sharon: For us to release [the album] this way was a choice we already made before the pandemic happened. Okay, we want to release singles in the moment, because sometimes, subjects – we were thinking about that at that time – some topics are important to address immediately when you have written it. Instead of waiting for three years to end up on an album, so… but then the pandemic happened, and we ended up releasing way more songs than we initially had planned, without there even being a finished album. So that was a bit crazy. But I don’t think we’ll release that many next time but it did help us to get through the pandemic, not just us, but hopefully also fans. It helped maybe a little bit and to have something to look forward to. So yeah, if you can listen back now, I do think they all do work well on the album, because lyric-wise, for instance, it’s all about freedom but from different perspectives and different subjects. And musically, it’s like a timeline from the moment that we started releasing ’till now it’s like, I don’t know, the more things happened… certain things happened in the world like the war, the music started becoming heavier as well. It’s a timeframe kind of project almost.
Yeah, that was going to be one of my questions, whether the political events also defined the album’s heavy sound. Today, I listened to another interview here you mentioned you got into SLEEP TOKEN. I was wondering whether they influenced the sound a little because in some songs, like “Bleed Out,” which has that apparent djent riff, there is something about the way you are playing around with the different contrasts of light and dark, that they also do.
Sharon: I think, not that band particularly, but many of those bands. it’s like the metalcore scene has inspired us.
Stefan: It’s definitely one of them.
Sharon: It’s just one of those bands that we like that, of course, you listen to and then, but also BAD OMENS, there are so many bands out there that we love, and ANNISOKAY, which we collaborated with. So it’s different because we grew up in the ’80s. There are so many influences in us, in our DNA, and we’re just trying to do new things as well at the same time, so then reinventing ourselves a little bit. I think we’ve seen that with the last few songs, especially.
Stefan: Yeah, definitely. We also had a different way of writing, writing riffs and everything on the keyboard instead of sitting on a guitar, and then learning the riffs on the guitar.
Isn’t that really hard to do?
Stefan: It’s really hard to play on the guitar. [laughs]
Exactly. Usually, when keyboardists write songs, it’s more difficult for everybody else.
Stefan: You can jump between octaves really far like this [plays piano], but then when you have only one hand…
Sharon: It sounds so logical, go do it and then make something more brilliant out of it.
Do you have any specific riffs that you can talk about that you wrote like that from the album?
Stefan: I think all of the last five songs and definitely, “Bleed Out.”
Sharon: Yeah, during the previous album we didn’t do that. It is a new evolution in the writing process.
Stefan: I think “Entertain You” is probably done the old-school way. entertain you is probably done. [starts humming]
Sharon: Old-fashioned. Old-school sounds better… vintage? [laughter]
Stefan: That would be difficult to write on the keyboard.
Is that something you enjoyed doing or are you not planning to do that in the future anymore?
Sharon: It’s going to be a combination probably, it’s just how it feels like.
Stefan: Every tool available is cool.
Sharon: Yeah, get out of the traditional way and also while doing it differently, you will get to new ideas again.
I thought “Worth Dying For” was a song that felt like a perfect bridge between your older material and your new material.
Sharon: I think you’re totally right. I heard that remark before. I totally agree with you. It’s the two worlds meeting up in the middle indeed, it’s a bit symphonic in a way, some new stuff in there as well. It wasn’t done intentionally, but I think it’s your DNA, so you bring out the old stuff as well and combine it with something new again.
Do you sometimes go back to your older material and listen to it?
Sharon: I don’t listen to my old music at all. At least, sometimes I come across a song mostly on social media that people are using it in the background, like for reels or something, like “Oh yeah, we have that song as well.” For instance, “Blue Eyes,” which is a B-side track, and it’s a nice song, but it’s like “Oh yeah, we have that one too.”
When you stumble across those B-tracks, does that feel a little weird to re-listen to those?
Sharon: There is a reason why they’re a B-side tracks because they didn’t completely…
Stefan: I don’t remember many of them. [laughter] Just saying.
Sharon: That says enough. [laughter] Yeah, it is nice but at the same time, I understand why it’s a B-side track.
Stefan: Some of them are pretty cool.
I remember in the days of listening to music, I guess there were also a lot more demos available on the internet. So how do you guys feel about those things being released and distributed?
Sharon: It was part of the process, so in a way, it’s okay. But on the other hand, I’m not really interested in the demos myself, because I think eventually what it turned out to be, is most of the time like 99% of the time better than the demo.
Stefan: Yeah, I guess it’s fun for the really hardcore fans to be able to get the full process. Also, METALLICA has released something like that. So you can pretty much follow “The Black Album” from the first riff, like, Kirk‘s riff just evolves and evolves.
Sharon: That’s fun when it’s done like that. Then it’s cool if they do it like very fast behind each other. That’s amazing.
Yeah, maybe something you can do for your older albums.
Sharon: Well, if you think of recording it from the first moment on, yeah.
I’m already amazed that METALLICA managed to do that back in the day, impressive. Anyway, going back to the album, I guess most of the songs are very much inspired by current things happening in the world. “Bleed Out,” for instance, was inspired by the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran. I noticed a lot of Iranian women also commented on the video in support of your song, and that they’re very touched by it. What do comments like that do to you?
Sharon: Of course, that gives us a good feeling that they see it at least and that they are not offended that we wrote anything about it, because it was like a bit of a difficult thing to talk about political topics, although, for me, I’ve lived in the Middle East when I was a child, so I have a certain emotional connection to that area as well. My parents were there as expats and I lived there for almost 2 years and went to Arabic school. I didn’t go to Iran, but I went to Yemen, where they have similarities. I think it’s very brave what they did in Iran, and what they’re still doing, and not just the young women, but also a lot of young men supporting them and doing the same thing, more or less, and not knowing what’s going to happen to them. I think that is so inspirational and brave that I get goosebumps whenever I talk about it because they don’t know what’s going to happen to them.
While reviewing the album, my journalist wrote in her conclusion that music is not meant only to entertain us but also to provoke a thought, an idea, or even a reaction, and that she felt like “Bleed Out” is an album that due to its themes sparks conversation. Do you feel like music is like that to you and that it’s important to include themes like that for the world to understand them?
Stefan: Yeah, I think music should be able to affect all things, there are no limits or rules. If you want to say something, if you want to address something, then you do that.
Sharon: Politics is a minefield when you go there as a musician because things can be interpreted, of course, in the wrong way. And so through interviews, we try to support the reason, or try to be transparent about why we wrote the lyrics, as we did, and the topics, why we chose them or came to us because sometimes you don’t even choose it, but it just comes out that way. And it’s for us dealing with the world personally and dealing with subjects that we find very intense. And to get rid of the frustration and fear and those kinds of things, we write music, apparently, and that’s a good way to deal with that. And the other hand, also, with the lyrics, you could be more maybe less upfront about it, which we did in the past. But nowadays, we feel it’s better to keep these subjects alive because a lot of times we get used to everything happening in the world, how crazy it is. And it’s getting crazier at the moment. So by talking about it… I’m actually realizing that there are a lot of elections now going on, so we need to keep on talking about what kind of world we want to live in, and it starts with elections. So we have, of course, yesterday in Poland the elections. Soon there will be elections in the Netherlands as well. By talking about it, hopefully, we’re putting a seed in people’s minds, you know, we’re just doing a small effort but we just hope that if it only is a few people then hopefully they will think about what they’re gonna elect for the election what they’re going to vote for.
Does it scare you at all that the world is becoming more and more polarized?
Stefan: It’s becoming more and more obvious. Of course, it depends on how much thought you put into it at the moment, if you go too far in, you get really scared, of course. It felt like it was going the other way for a long time and then all of a sudden started to change. Of course.
Sharon: But I think if this is the worst place, almost where we are at, then it can only go for the better. So hopefully, we realize that we can do something together, although it’s a lot to process, and there’s a lot of change that needs to be done to make it somehow more in balance again, I guess because the balance is a bit gone at the moment. But it’s important to have this conversation, I think, instead of trying to look away and not doing anything, it feels even more frustrating to not do anything than to talk about it.
Most of the themes on the album and what we are talking about now are very dark. Your music, at least in the past, has always had an element of hope to it. Have you been doing that intentionally over the years?
Sharon: In the past, I felt that we did that a lot, with this album, I don’t have that feeling. Actually, I just tell how we see it and how we feel it. But applauding bravery, that’s something that we do, trying to empower people that maybe feel the need to, that’s maybe the positive thing about this album. I’m not saying that they believe in a certain kind of light or anything, but I do… the light is those people who are standing up and risking everything by saying what they believe in and standing their ground. So that’s the thing.
One of my other favorite songs on the record is “Cyanide Love,” is there anything you can say about that song?
Sharon: “Cyanide Love” is a song about Kherson, actually, the resistance in Kherson, which was used by the civilians, fighting back against the Russians attacking them at night. Kherson was the first city to be taken by the Russians and they they won it back again. And then, of course, the dams were exploded. So it flooded and everything, so it’s completely ruined. But we were there in 2008, which sounds like a long time ago. But what happened there was we were invited by an institution and the mayor was involved as well. They showed us around for four days to five days in Kherson. And we planted a tree with the mayor and a whole delegation for peace, which looking back on it at that time didn’t make much sense because there was no war going on. But of course, they had always their tensions with Russia and we saw a museum so it made more sense to us then. Also, we had such a nice time I met so many lovely people and to think about those people and find those pictures again on the internet later on. Thinking of the fact that these people might not be alive anymore, or hurt, or fighting. Yeah, that is making it very direct also and intense. So that song is about resistance in Kherson.
You mentioned you planted a tree there. Do you know what happened to it during the attacks?
Sharon: There was very close to the river and the dam was exploded by bombs so I think there won’t be anything left. I don’t think there’s anything that yes, I’m not sure actually.
That is extremely sad. Hopefully, someday when it’s rebuilt, you can visit it again. As a musician, you get to see a lot of places in the world. When there are so many things going on like war or natural disasters, do you feel like it affects you more than other people when those places are mentioned?
Stefan: I would think it does. Because if you only know about a place where you see it on the news, okay, it was invaded, okay that sucks, but maybe you don’t get more connection to that. If you’ve been there you met people there, you have memories, you have feelings connected to it, it’s definitely gonna affect you a lot more.
Sharon: I totally agree with that, it becomes more… because you can imagine, we have good memories of being there actually seeing things and being amazed about, especially when we were in Kherson. We were amazed about the beauty of the country as well, and we’d been to Kyiv, also a few times and also played a lot in Russia and even met there also, of course, a lot of people, beautiful people. Also seeing the difference, the free West in Europe. Compared to what the news was in Russia, while touring there is like 180 degrees different kind of information they got, than we are seeing here. And if you’re being told the same thing over and over again, and there’s only limited access to news, then it’s very difficult to think otherwise than what the government is telling you, of course, then you end up believing everything they’re saying, I guess.
Now, you have a huge tour coming up in South America and in Europe, so far, but that’s only in 2024. So there’s a little bit of time in between. Are you enjoying the time off or are you planning something else?
Stefan: We start planning for the tour, but we get some free time before that.
Sharon: It’s a big process as well, because many, like the creative process, thinking of what’s going to fit in every venue size-wise, because there are different sizes of venues that we play in and different countries. And so what we’re able to do on stage is going from left to right always, and we end up in the middle of what’s possible. But we’re going to try to make something spectacular, like the last time because we went extreme with the last two, we can’t do less of course, because you always want to do more.
Stefan: How much Pyro can we fit this time?
Sharon: Yeah, [laughter] how much can we let fly?
Stefan: Can I get a pyro on my head?
You’re not gonna play guitars, but pyros? That’s the next step, basically.
Sharon: Let him fly, of course!
Stefan: Fly and pyros!
Sharon: At the same time! [laughter]
How do you prep for a tour like that? I suppose you have a creative team that helps you with ideas, but do they have to push down your ideas sometimes?
Sharon: We do that ourselves, we are working with a creative team that we surround ourselves with, who are specialists in that corner, but they go over the moon and then like okay, we go along with them the journey and we have our ideas of what we want to do and then halfway we meet and then see what’s actually possible, and come down on earth again. So that’s our usual process. [laughs]
I guess fans don’t really see what happens behind the scenes, so how long does it usually take you to prepare for a tour on this scale?
Sharon: A long time, especially because you have to have all the measurements or the technical stuff that you need to have before you finally get everything that you’ve already realized that what you were thinking of is way too big and way too many and way too expensive. Then, you have to make certain choices like killing your darling time. It’s like the creative process of an album. You write a lot of songs and it’s kill your darlings time while finishing the songs and also between choosing songs.
Stefan: Same here, pretty much. It’s about having ideas and then shooting them down.
You mentioned killing your darlings… Is there any song after all these years that you don’t want to play anymore? But you sort of have to.
Sharon: I don’t have that but maybe you do?
Stefan: I don’t have one. If I would have had one, it would have come flying immediately when I got that question. Nothing was coming so I don’t think so.
Sharon: I didn’t want to play… What’s the song again? We just talked about, what was the song again. The one that we did for “The Aftermath.”
Stefan: “Forgiven?”
Sharon: No, no, no, no. Not “Forgiven,” the heavy song… “Forsaken”!
Stefan: “Forsaken.” That’s the one! Sounds the same. Forgiven, forsaken. [laughter]
Sharon: Yes, what’s in a name? That’s the song that I didn’t want to play for a long time because I found it too heavy in a way, maybe depressing in a way, but it’s a very accurate song for that time already and also nowadays, but it was too heavy somehow… the lyrics, I don’t know, I just found it very heavy.
As somebody who grew up in Belgium, that’s like one of my favorite songs [laughs].
Sharon: That’s what I mean, I should have not mentioned that. Don’t ask that question ever again! [laughter]
Stefan: What you were going to say is that you love it so much.
Sharon: Now I love it again. [laughter]
That whole album was very popular in Belgium, so you know how it is… being a teenager. Nostalgia!
Sharon: Sorry! [laughs]
No, that’s okay. I was just wondering that because I know that you switched around the “Ice Queen” version. So I was wondering, do you maybe not enjoy playing some of the more old-school songs anymore?
Sharon: We do, but it’s more to have more diversity, it’s nicer for fans, as well as to reinvent your older songs. We were just actually talking about that, right?
Stefan: Yeah, it’s nice to do a different version of a song. Because then it feels fresh to you and then it’s nice also to go back to the old version, it’s like: “This acoustic version, is great, it’s so nice, and then, ahhhh this feels so much better.”
Sharon: Full power! [laughs]
I guess for some tours you can re-imagine your old songs at least a little, but is that something you would be interested in doing someday? Have an album filled with re-interpretations of your songs?
Sharon: Well, not for every song of course, but some songs which you think you can do differently? You know, like, nowadays we are technically… it’s easier to downtune certain songs where we weren’t able to do that in the past because the technology wasn’t there yet to do so. And then the song who might benefit from it because I have, of course, a certain range, and it’s difficult with my voice because it’s a very clear voice but also not the biggest voice, it’s like a little bit thin sometimes depending on where you are. Then downtuning it makes it more possible to make it sound better.
Stefan: Would be interesting to do some versions where it’s really downtuned and change the riffs around a little…
Sharon: And also make it heavier.
More djent?
Sharon: Yes, more djent! I love it!
Well, credits if you ever do that. [laughter] Just kidding. That’s pretty much it for my questions unless you want to say something about the upcoming show in Helsinki.
Sharon: We have three golden tickets to give away and those golden tickets are hidden away in our merchandise in only the musical merchandise, like CDs, boxes, and everything. Those golden tickets will enable you to go to any show in Europe, including the UK. So hopefully one of you guys will find one of those in your package or whatever you’re getting, so good luck!
That’s pretty cool. That’s very like a Chocolate Factory-ish of you.
Sharon: Like Willy Wonka! [laughter] All the way.
Willy Wonka of metal. That’s cool. Anyway, thanks for taking the time. Do you have any last thoughts you want to share with your fans?
Stefan: Stay in school.
Sharon: Stay in school! [laughter]
Stefan: Do what you want to do.
Sharon: Do something fun, life should be fun as well. Thank you!
Interview by Laureline Tilkin
