Interviu: Within Temptation la Artmania

Within Temptation: Hi, we're Robert and Jeroen.



Metropotam: We're Cristina and Cristina.

Oh, that's convenient!

Yeah, it's the main reason why they hired both of us, makes it easier for our boss to call us. :)
[metropotam clears its throat] Let's talk about your music first.

Jeroen: That's nice, not about shoe sizes?

We're getting there. You have a very strong style but it changed a little bit in the Silent Force, some say it's commercial, some say it's very good, you have electro and pop influences... Why did you change your style?

Jeroen: Comes naturally. We just write the music we want and if that's different from the former album, then it's different.
Robert: I think we need to change to get inspiration. If we do the same thing, it's too boring for us, probably, so we are searching for new things to put it on music, and that's what we like.

So you write music that you like, not necessarily what fans want.

R: No, exactly, we write what comes out of us and you can never please people, you cannot please everybody, that's impossible, so we don't try to. And if people say that you go commercial, I think that has only to do with the fact that you are successful.

Only few people say that.

R: No, but sometimes it's a bit crazy because if you for example look at our last album, it's heftier than the ones before, and still people say "you're more commercial"

Is it that bad to be commercial?

R: It's not bad, no, sure, no...
J: But people seem to think it's a negative thing

Success is not a bad thing.

J: Because they think that you write music you don't like in order to sell albums, and that's the negative thing about it.
R: It also takes away the attention off what it's all about, and that's the music, it doesn't matter if something sells or doesn't sell, it only matters if you like what you hear.



So what can you tell us about your last album?

R: Errr... we can tell ya a lot about it :)

Does it have a story behind it?

R: I think this album was one of the fastest albums we wrote, took two and a half years after the last one, we did a lot of touring also, so... I think it took a year to write and finish, so it was for us a relatively easy album, although it's never easy...

It's still a long time.

Yeah, but you know, it's actually only one year when you actually write, it's a lot of touring and you don't have time to write, so you actually have to stop everything that you're doing, and then start again... The nice thing about this album is that we managed to get the guitars out, and the drums out, and still have the orchestra there, and the dynamics, and Sharon is singing low and high and yeah, I think that's the most important, and also the cover is something which we are very happy with, it's done by a famous art photographer.

And why did you choose Bucharest to shoot two videos? (detalii aici)

It was actually the video director we chose because we worked with him before during the Angels video and he works a lot in Romania, and we had the story lines of the videos and he said "Whoa, Romania has some really nice locations where we can do this", because we wanted to shoot two videos at the same time, so we needed a lot of different places to shoot at, and it was perfect, you can see it, if you've seen the videos that we were very happy with the songs (Frozen and The Howling videos).



What did you think of Bucharest, did you like it, did you have the time to look around?

J: No, we didn't have any free time, we only saw the hotel, got picked up, and have only been to Bucharest one afternoon I think...
R: We only saw like the city center from the car...
J: But in Sibiu we had the chance to see more.
R: It is very beautiful, Bucharest is of course very big...
J: And you really have to know the places you want to go to, so it's a bit difficult for us to get around.

Did you get the chance to have a walk in Sibiu?

R: Not that much, we just got from the hotel and we just drove in, but we saw from the car that it's very beautiful...

That's too bad, I guess it's one of the disadvantages.

Yeah, exactly, but if you know where you have to go to, and if you have free time, we now know where to come to holiday, this is a good place to come back to.

One of your songs is about child abuse and violence, do you think that it is still a problem of our society?

R: That's two reasons, the first was that when we first started to think about the story line we chose Frozen. And then we did of course a video, and the lyrics for Frozen are about sacrificing something for someone you love, and so in the end we came to this story, this feeling of sacrifice, from the mother to the child, it's appropriate for the song, it really gives you something extra, and of course there's the fact that Sharon and I have a child, and Stephen has also a child, and you realize the impact that it has, how terrible it is when that happens.



I also think that we chose to do this video like 100 years ago because it fits our band, but on the other hand it also shows that it hasn't changed that much during all these years, it still happens so much, and i think it's also very good to give the potential, it still happens so much.

And the money will be donated, right? To a charity foundation.

R: Yeah, because we felt like you can't bring this up to make your profit out of it, the subject is too sensitive for that.

You said once, that you have film influences in your music, which is very dramatic. Did you ever think to make a movie, or to compose music for one?

J: It would be nice, we dreamt about it, but it would be so hard, i guess,
R: Making movies is of course another profession, you can only do a few things in your life - well -  so, making a movie would be great, but maybe making the music for it, then it would be something, the problem's at the moment we're so busy with Within Temptation that it's... You have to make choices in life, what do you want? A new album or do you want to do something else?



You composed music for two video games, right?

Yeah. That was more like it... they asked us to write songs and that was more like in our line of things, so that's what we did, we didn't write the whole music for during the game, it was for a a trailer and for a small part, and that's something different than to write music for the whole video game, that's something really different.

For a movie, it would be harder.

For a movie, yeah, but it's also pretty comparable. Just takes a lot of time.

(Artmania staff bangs at the door, desperately pointing at the wristwatch, we exchange polite smiles)

Well, thank you very much for the ...

What, no shoe questions?

We're saving some for after the show tonight, see ya there.

And we did.