Interview: Sharon den Adel Talks Within Temptation’s Australian Debut at Knotfest 2025 – Spotlight Report

Dutch symphonic metal powerhouse Within Temptation is finally making their way Down Under for the very first time as part of Knotfest 2025. 

In addition to their three festival performances, the band has announced two highly anticipated sideshows in Brisbane and Melbourne, giving Aussie fans even more chances to witness their live spectacle.

Ahead of this tour, we caught up with the band’s iconic vocalist Sharon den Adel, who opened up about her unconventional journey to becoming a singer without formal training, her thoughts on the creative challenges posed by AI in music, and her experience of collaborating with Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach in the song “The Reckoning”.

Sharon had an exciting message for Aussie fans: she’s calling on you to help shape Within Temptation‘s Knotfest set-list! The band wants their first-ever visit Down Under to be unforgettable, so they’re asking fans to jump on social media and share their must-hear songs. It’s your chance to help curate a show that truly makes everyone happy!

SR. Just a while ago it was announced Within Temptation is playing a 2 Knotfest sideshows in Australia. Congratulations on that!

SDA. Thank you very much. Looking forward to that as well. You know we love that we are joining not the first of time, which is a big honour and playing alongside all these amazing bands. But it’s nice to have two sideshows as well. We can play a little bit longer!

SR. With sideshows now as part of the tour. Have you work on the festival & sideshows set-list already?

SDA. No, we’re still going through that because we also have a new, a keyboard player coming along with us, to Australia, especially to Australia and, so, we still have to go through with everybody what we’re going to play. So, that’s something that we still have to do. But it’s, it will be some of the usual suspects, of course. The fan favourite songs, especially on the side shows that people expect you to play. But it’s, you know, with some countries, you know, which, which songs people really prefer, but with Australia we have no clue as it’s our first time there.

So just we’re going to, just going to, from the experience that we have that we played in so many different countries and take like, yeah, the experience from that to Australia.

SR. The Within Temptation tour in Australia has been well overdue, and we are all so happy to finally see you live here. Why did it take the band so long to come to Australia?

SDA. There’s many reasons why we didn’t. One one reason is it’s like it’s very far away Australia. And normally you would like to combine with other shows and now we’re not even doing that.

We’re just coming in from playing 45, shows and, but it’s also sometimes that you have like had already playing so many other countries and then another comes, and another one and you actually want to go and write new music again. It’s quite far away and I hate flying. So it’s for me like, being 24 hours in the, in a plane, you know, its hard.

I got some advice, I’m taking sleeping pills, to wake up in Australia. Oh, we also have a stop in the halfway also. So it’s like, it’s it’s a really long journey and, yeah, it’s, it’s like I said, I don’t like flying that much, and I’m the little bit like, “ba ba ba ba” and they have to knock me out before I go into a plane (laughs).

SR. Speaking about your music, “Bleed Out” is a superb album, feels as if the band went back to its roots a bit. The album was released in 2023, so two years later, just wondering if there is any new album in progress?

SDA. We are working on new stuff, but not sure when we’re going to release. We’re going to take our time now. At least that was the beginning idea, how we started. Like, okay, we’re going to take it really easy, maybe take two years, maybe three, and it’s because we released so many things during the Corona Virus time and then released the album and went on tour with Evanescence and then later on, again on tour. And so it was just constantly touring, touring, touring. And it’s nice to have some time off and really, crystallize what you want, the ideas that you have about the next album. But on the other hand, it goes so well at the moment, but we think that maybe we don’t need three years, maybe we just going to go on next year with two years, maybe one and a half. You know, it’s getting shorter already because with us at times change. The idea is changed very quickly. Like what we have in mind.

SR. Your range is impressive, your voice is so powerful. One of the things that surprised me while doing research for this interview, is the fact you never got professional singing classes and also you have a degree in fashion design and you look after the outfits for the band. How do you managed to bring these two worlds together?

SDA. Thank you. Well, two things. I had two hobbies as a girl growing up. You know, I loved singing. That was my first passion. Then, you know, people around me said that, you know, music is not for the Netherlands. There’s no music history here, so you better get a proper job. So I did fashion management eventually, and, went to the fashion industry besides being in the bands, and when the band broke through, in the Netherlands and then afterwards in Europe, we were able to, you know, really go full forward with the music.

I’ve always been in bands since the age of 11. The first cool band I was in, was when I was 11, and when I was 14, I got to meet some older boys who were like 20, and they wanted to start a band and they heard me singing, and they said, like, maybe you would like to join our band. We’re going to start for the first time or somewhere else. And, and I was like, “oh my God, great”. You know? And I got into different music and I was listening to myself and they were into Iron Maiden, but also Stevie Ray Vaughan, a lot of blues kind of stuff. Robben Ford and I played everything. I sang everything, you know, and I learned a lot from that, and, also to listening to music and trying to train my voice. It was mostly to sing along, and if I can sound exactly the way they did, I would, you know, like, do it over and over and over again.

I did ask a few vocal teachers, if I was using my voice in the right way. They said, well, if you don’t have any problems with singing, if it doesn’t hurt, then you probably are doing the right thing. And there are many ways to roam, so there’s not one way to sing it.

That’s also because I found it very difficult when people say, yeah, you have to sing from your belly and blah, blah, blah. I was like, I don’t understand what they are talking about at all. So, I tried a few times and I gave up very quickly also, and then everything I did was coming more in a natural way for me, just listening how to do things. If didn’t feel right in my voice, but I found a different way to sing it, you know, and then eventually got the results most, most of the time, that of the songs that I felt that I could be able to sing. That’s how I taught myself, throughout the years.

SR. Obviously songs like “Faster”, “Angels”, “The Reckoning” and “Ice Queen” of course, are signature songs of Within Temptation, they have kind of different styles, different range on your end for each of them. Are you going to include those for us in the Knotfest set-list? 

SDA. I think that’s a good question. Not sure about those four, but yeah, we’re gonna, of course we’re to be very diverse with those 40 minutes, only 40 minutes!, and our songs are pretty long also. So, we have like two minute songs or anything, it’s like, everything is like at least three, three and a half. So it’s challenging. We have to make, yeah, choices, unfortunately. But maybe we will play a different set-list every Knotfest show. We’ve got we’ve got eight albums and I don’t think it’s eight albums of songs that we can choose from.

“…maybe we will play a different set-list every Knotfest show…”

SR. What will you say is the most challenging song for you to sing?

SDA. “The Reckoning”, because I did the high line of that one and it’s, it’s really constantly, constantly on top of my voice with a more normal reach. It’s really taking when I sing, sing that song, I really have to take, you know, I have to take a glass of water or it’s really moisturize my vocal chords again.

Yeah, it’s an intense song, and, Jacoby (Shaddix), of course, from a rock approach is singing the low parts, and, I’m actually normally a little bit lower than what I’m doing in that song, so it was really taking a lot of effort to sing that song for me.

SR. You just touched on my next question. How was working with the likes of Jacoby of Papa Roach and also with Tobias Sammet in Avantasia.

SDA. With Toby, I met him a few times, and, he’s a very nice and warm guy, very passionate about music, and he many years ago, he approached me for to sing on this album, and, to play a character in. There’s this fantasy, story that he’s telling, but it just fitted me as a glove, actually, the tonality and everything.

I only met Jacoby of Papa Roach once, backstage at a festival, I was like, “hey, how are you doing?”, and then we just had a very nice conversation. Never met the rest of the band, actually (laughs).

A few months later, we wrote “The Reckoning” and we feel like, oh, who can we ask for this song? Because it needs a particular kind of vocal. And I said, well, maybe we can ask Jacoby and we just called him and, yeah. He said, his wife really liked the music. He recorded in America and so that that’s how it came about.

SR. Looking at the “Bleed Out” Video and also “The Ritual”, you guys are using AI for the clips, something that is really scary for many artists, and people in general I must say. In the wake of AI, what would you say is the biggest challenge for musicians today?

SDA. You are right, for every “pro thing” there is a negative thing. Like, of course if it’s for videos and those kind of things It’s easier to get something, done, which was normally impossible sometimes or too expensive.

However, if people try to make your music with it, you know, trying to say, okay, we’re going to sound like this band or that band, it will never be that band…there’s still like a bit of an irritation that people can do that, because with your music, like, okay you say “we’ll make a song that sounds like this band or that band”, but on the other hand, it’s not you, you have no identity.

I also heard people trying to write music with AI, which I think is really a pity because, you know if you need a guitar and you can’t play guitar and you want to have something like a sound in the studio of just fills in that part that you can’t play yourself at the moment because you keep it. You know, your your guitar player is not there or something, it’s just odd. Maybe that’s something to do, but to write music like that doesn’t feel like there’s any hard work or meaning in that.

I don’t remember the name of the band, but there was a huge tour here in the Netherlands, for this AI generated music that sold out. It was for kids, young kids. And it was so popular, it was sold out within, I think, ten minutes or something. And one of the biggest venues that we have in the Netherlands, it was completely full.

You didn’t see a person on stage, you saw just, a figure like a cartoon, kind of a cartoon the music was AI, and there was apparently some kind of band playing along with it, but still all these kids, you know, like, it’s it’s a different world, you know, it’s crazy.

These are things that we have to get used to that that’s. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle, to my opinion. But, but there’s good things about AI as well and, I think there should be, like, registrations in that sense of what you can use and what you can’t use.

For creators don’t want to get ripped out of their work or stuff like that. So, those are things that I do worry about, but it’s more like we have to see how we can manage that, of course, in the future and that’s up to all of us, I guess.

SR. Can you share with us any funny story or any odd fan requests while on tour?

SDA. Oh my God. Besides the marriages that people want to propose, you know, like they want to propose on stage or in front of the stage, which is really sweet.

When we played in Scotland many years ago, I saw people talking about on our forums about wearing skirts to our shows, and you know, under the skirts, there is nothing under, no underwear, at least it’s the traditional way sometimes in Scotland.

I saw this people talking on our forum and I was like, oh, I’ts funny. So I was on stage and I said, okay, so “who is wearing a skirt today?”, and then eventually somebody came on stage and I was thinking, this is going to be Scottish guy. But then it turned out to be a Polish guy (Laughs). Those kind of things are the best because it was like, really? And it was a huge guy. It was so tall! (laughs).

“… We are going to do our best to make a set-list that makes, most of you happy. It’s going to be difficult and if you have any suggestions, then let us know on socials…”

SR. Just to finish, do you have any message for your Australian fans ahead of the Knotfest tour?

SDA. We are going to do our best to make a set-list that makes, most of you happy. It’s going to be difficult and if you have any suggestions, then let us know on socials. We really want to try to make a very nice set-list that everybody will like. Of course, we know which ones are more or less the favorites for everyone, everywhere, but Australia is new continent for us, so help us out.

Can’t wait to play for you guys and, so let us know what’s whatever you want to hear. So, we can, take that in consideration.

WITHIN TEMPTATION
Knotfest 2025 Sideshows