#our farewell

[black-arcana]

Within Temptation’s Sharon den Adel: My Life In 10 Songs

By Catherine Morris ( Metal Hammer )

From symphonic metal ballads to Lana del Rey covers, these are the Within Temptation songs that mean the most to frontwoman Sharon den Adel

(𝘐𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘵: 𝘛𝘪𝘮 𝘛𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘬𝘰𝘦)

Sharon den Adel emerged onto the metal scene 25 years ago with Within Temptation, lending the angelic highs of her soprano vocal range to the Dutch band’s ethereal yet heavy sound. Since then they’ve continually evolved, working with everyone from the Dutch Metropole Orchestra to hip hop legend Xzibit, but never losing the vast cinematic element of their sound. We sat down with the effervescent singer to pick through the tracks which best represent her musical journey with the band.

                                        ~*~~*~~*~~*~

Candles (Enter, 1997)

“I think the most beautiful song [on Enter] is Candles. It has a romantic, dark feeling to it. We were very much inspired by all the epic movies we were watching at the time, like Braveheart, that were these big sagas. I was also reading George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire; I could disappear into those books. They gave me a lot of inspiration to write lyrics.

“It was while listening to this Paradise Lost song – Lost Paradise, I think it was – that had this opera singer on it, that the penny dropped for us. Something beautiful combined with heavy music and growling. From then, all the things we really loved listening to – Marillion, Iron Maiden, Kate Bush, Tori Amos – small elements of these all bubbled up and came out in the music.”

Ice Queen (Mother Earth, 2000)

“A lot of people got to know us through Ice Queen. Actually, it was called Believer in the beginning, but we wanted to continue the theme of Mother Earth. I don’t mind playing it for the rest of our lives. We’ve tried to make different versions of it that give it a new life and a new shine, and it’s taken many different shapes: we did an acoustic version where we tried to give it a more bluesy sound, we had Jasper Steverlinck cover it who did an amazing job, and now we’re playing the original again. I still like the song because it brings me back to my love of Nirvana – and look, I know nobody hears Nirvana in it except me. But when I’m singing it, I feel like I’m singing Nirvana! It feels like a rebellious song.”

Our Farewell (Mother Earth, 2000)

“It’s a personal song. I had a great relationship with my grandmother so after she passed away, this song was for her; that’s why it’s called Our Farewell. We had a beautiful bond; she was like a second mom. Whenever I wasn’t happy at home I’d get on my bike and ride to her house on the other side of our little village. We played it at the Elements show and at some festivals we did the song with an opera singer. She represented for me the other voice, my grandmother. It was like I was singing to her and she was singing back to me, “we’ll meet each other again”. Our spirits are connected.”

Stand My Ground (The Silent Force, 2004)

“What I love about Stand My Ground is that it’s taken on so much more meaning for many different people than when we first wrote it. For us it was a song to talk about what was happening in politics at the time in the Netherlands – things were really changing at that time, getting darker and darker. But what you see now is that a lot of groups within our own community have adopted this song to address their own issues, like the LGBTQIA+ community for instance, we see a lot of people waving Pride flags at our shows and we really support that.

Pale (The Silent Force, 2004)

“It’s the most dark ballad and I love it, but it’s also like looking in the mirror and facing your demons; it shows the inside of your soul. It’s heavy. Robert wrote the lyrics for the most part, especially the lyrics, so it’s more his personal song, and it’s about depression. We all have those periods in life, it’s human. We can’t always have highs, and I think people who have really high highs have really deep lows, but then it’s like – how do I get away from that again? How do I get back to the other side? It’s always a struggle.”

What Have You Done feat. Mina Caputo (The Heart of Everything, 2007)

“What Have You Done was really special. Life of Agony has been a band that we’ve loved ever since we started making music. I remember they played Pinkpop festival in the Netherlands and they were on super early in the morning and it was raining, but we didn’t care, we just stood there in the pouring rain watching them. And after many years, we reached out to them and it was like– suddenly, the world becomes not so big anymore, when you can reach out to a musician and they respond enthusiastically to you. It makes the music even more special to me when you can bring your heroes closer. It’s the best thing ever, and it's a song that really does justice to her voice and mine.”

Iron (The Unforgiving, 2011)

“I think we had really finalised our big symphonic sound but then didn’t really know where to go from there, which is why everything changed on this album. We created our own comic, and all of the songs are based on the comic storyline. But it’s also based on our memories of reading comics as a kid, which is why we went back to our big musical heroes growing up, particularly on songs like Iron, which were inspired by Iron Maiden and Metallica. We were 80s kids and it was a beautiful time to grow up in and absorb all that music. It’s really an homage to the 80s.”

Summertime Sadness (The Q-Music Sessions, 2013)

“A radio station in Belgium asked us to do ten cover songs while we were in the studio for Hydra and it was amazing to do. It really gave us a new insight into songwriting, taking other artists’ songs apart and building them back up in our own style… I really loved that period.

“At the time Lana del Rey was something of a new artist on the block. She had this 50s vibe, but so dark and with a twist to it that I really admired. That first album (Born to Die) just blew me away. It was totally different from my own music but had this feminine touch that I could relate to.”

And We Run feat. Xzibit (Hydra, 2014)

“I remember when Aerosmith did Walk This Way with Run DMC and we loved that combination of rock music with something so different. This is our own interpretation of that – not of that song specifically, but of that collaboration of two worlds colliding and working really well together. It’s a song that people either loved or hated, and some people judged it without even listening to it or knowing Xzibit. We’ve always loved him. Honestly, I don’t mind if people don’t like things, it was an amazing collaboration and he really is the nicest guy on Earth. We’re different in so many ways but it felt really beautiful how we connected through music. And he said something that I will always remember which is that you can buy anything in life, except for time. That’s stuck in my head all these years.”

Don’t Pray For Me (single, 2022)

“It’s really about individuality and trying to protect that. Sometimes when you grow up in a community you feel pressure to fit in, you want to fit in – but sometimes, you don’t have that choice. You might think or feel differently than how you were brought up, whether that’s religion, sexuality… So many things are changing right now, with abortion rights, for example – people trying to decide for you how you should live your life. It’s really sad that people are trying to force their ways on other people. It’s something I’m really worried about. People can only be happy if they can be who they want to be.”

[cametotheshowinsd]

Midnights Era || how it started / how it ended

[alaeries]

😴

[triflesandparsnips]

Lot of takes going around the internets about certain "deaths" in the ofmd season finale, so, uh-- guess it's time for me to try and lose some followers on tumblr dot com with

Some Thoughts on Why I Am Not Particularly Bothered or Concerned about Izzy's Apparent "Death"

Laying the groundwork first...

1. Narratively speaking, Izzy's been a dead man walking since the start of the season. Babe shot himself and got a rebirth-- but he still definitely intended to die. Every minute he was still around was borrowed time.

Did he have to die? Maybe not. I know I could've written a version of the show where he didn't. But then that would be my show-- not theirs. I can't know exactly what themes, bugbears, bête noires, catharsis, or artistic Vibes are driving that writers' room, and until the credits run on the finale of the third season, none of the rest of us can either.

2. Izzy spent the season being in a liminal state-- and there's nothing in the story saying that he can't continue doing that. Izzy spent the season having one foot in one space, one hoof in the other, and himself halfway through the door, a chimera of mirrored things right up to his "death": pirate and ship, hard and soft, old ways and new, etc etc. But "the gravy basket" is a weird little liminal space between life and death, a place that both Ed and Buttons have found (and returned from) before. We don't know where Izzy "is" right now-- he could be there.

(tbh, I wonder how much poor feeling we'd be having about all this if we'd gotten a final tag of a blue-washed Izzy staring down at a bowl of soup while helplessly saying "but this isn't gravy, what the fu--")

3. I think there is an unfortunate belief that "it's not real unless you see the body" is a universal -- or perhaps inarguable -- "fact" of storytelling. But it's not. It's just a bit of narrative shorthand that got popular, and now we're too ready to fall into the trap of believing the inverse is true too-- that if there is a body, then there must therefore have been a "real" death.

This season has spent quite a lot of narrative time and effort telling us that its story is using a different model, with different shorthands; specifically, that magic is real, that there is at least some kind of existence after death, and that the dead can be resurrected.

And that brings me to the meat of why I'm not particularly bothered or concerned about what, at this stage of the story, could still very well be just a minor setback--

4. This whole show, and particularly this season, is a fairy tale. It's a story that works with fairy tale logic and tropes, and it's in conversation with other fairy tales too, ones that the OFMD audience is likely to know well enough to spot their narrative beats in action. So "Pinocchio" gets mentioned a lot? Cool-- the audience applies what is commonly known of that story to this one ("a real boy", the mirror-opposite being a puppet with no nose, etc), and finds some Cool Shit. Then they're primed to keep looking for fairy tales, even unnamed ones, in case there's another little nugget of reward-dopamine for finding a connection.

So the fact that we saw a mermaid? Suddenly, I personally am noticing "Little Mermaid" motifs all over the place. That Ed was in a "sleep like death" -- after fucking around with a spinning wheel -- until his prince came to wake him? Well fuck, man, that's Blackbeard playing "Sleeping Beauty" for us all.

And bringing it all back to a "dead" Izzy Hands... when I add up a "dead" body surrounded by a bunch of laborers mourning the person who nominally kept their living space nice AND who was wanted dead by an authority figure for the crime of being the "better" version of what that figure wanted to be...

...well fuck, idk about the rest of you, but to me that all adds up to Izzy's story being Snow fucking White. Waiting for someone to come pull the bullet poisoned apple from his body so he can live again.

5. This is a second season. Of three. And Izzy Hands is the writer's favorite chewtoy, so there is lots of time, space, and incentive to bring him back. If there's a third season, we have a pile of ways he could be brought back over the course of hours of literal viewing time and possibly months of in-narrative time. That's ages.

And the solutions don't have to be difficult! For instance, we still have canonical hallucinations from Stede-- that's one route. Or fuck it, we could have Izzy's (very solid-looking) ghost be the embodiment of their being haunted by the Sea, that would work too.

And even barring all that-- his grave is right there with our heroes. The ship is out there hunting down his murderer. Even if you're happy he's dead... bad news, friend. He's all over the third season landscape. (uh oh, it's GNU Izzy Hands)

But those are just a few options that leave his body rotting but his character still alive. I happen to think we could all dream a little bigger, darlings. For instance:

A. You cannot tell me that these writers, on this show, with these actors, would not absolutely go all in on a zombie-esque hand thrusting out of the dirt mere hours after burial. Look me in the eyes and tell me Con O'Neill wouldn't pull off an entire digging-out scene only to end with himself panting beside the hole, looking around, hearing Ed and Stede being weird in their haunted hut, and wearily say, "Are you fucking kidding me."

B. Don't like zombies? Want to stay closer to the Snow White vibe AND introduce a love interest for him? One hyphenated word: body-snatcher. Gotta dig those bodies up fresh for the Definitely Historically Accurate anatomists of the time! But oh, says this New Guy, this corpse is-- wow, it's weird that they buried him with a rose and really amazing makeup and a truly extraordinary number of whittled whales, plus what's with that horsey leg grave marker, this guy must've been fucking fascinating, man, I wish I could've met him-- --at which point Izzy's hand shoots out and chokes the guy half to death and the lads come tumbling out of the house and ta da, mission accomplished, Izzy resurrected in 5 minutes or less with his horsey leg conveniently beside him and an entire season for himself and everyone else to Deal With It, amazing, fantastic, no notes from me.

C. Come to think of it, there is genuinely a non-zero chance that the crew just. Fucked up the burial. I mean... even though I was just arguing why we shouldn't see it as Law, we didn't actually see the body. We saw a grave. What did they bury him in? Was it a box? Was it some canvas? Did they definitely pick up the right one when it was time to bury him? Or did they maybe carefully make him an ahistorical safety coffin just in case a cat demon came to bother him and his corpse wanted to make a fuss about it, y'know, very common, could happen to anyone, and Frenchie just so happens to have Blackbeard's old collar bell right here--

6. Here's the bottom line, imo: The only thing that would keep Izzy really actually dead and completely removed from the story is a lack of narrative time and space-- and we have plenty of both. Stories are like Lego. If you've got enough time and you're willing to play with pieces from a whole lotta different sets, it's not hard to put the same elements together in different ways to get new, exciting configurations. It's why I'm actually rubbish at predicting exact details of stuff-- there are a lot of ways something could go, there are infinite doors out of problems the narrative seems to throw at us, and no two people will come up with the same thing because we're all different.

That, to me, is one of the big ways I personally enjoy and engage with stories. And it's why I genuinely can't be fussed about Izzy's death, not when we're only two-thirds through the story as a whole; observing someone setup and then try and execute a complicated narrative trick is my jam.

But my way of engaging with all this is by no means the best or only way. How we all interact with art, and what speaks to us, is extremely personal. If how this season and Izzy's death went just didn't work for you, that's okay. I'm sorry it wasn't the story you wanted it to be. That blows.

I just know I can't say yet that it didn't work for me. I won't know until I can take in the entire picture, just as I can't judge a finished Lego set by the one piece I step on midway through construction. I can see different ways Izzy's death/rebirth could absolutely work, but will the writer manage it? I dunno.

But I'm willing to wait and see if the stupid puppet can pull it off.

[dilli-vali-girlfriend]

i believe the best part of girlhood is wearing a saree for the first time for your farewell, never wanting to get out of it, and getting the types of compliments you've never received in your life. Full desi girl moment

[whumpypepsigal]

watched the little mermaid last night and it’s everything i imagined it to be and more. im cheesing smiling kicking my feet up beaming with joy. halle is ARIEL and jonah is PRINCE ERIC aassddffgghgkllllll what a perfect cast. HALLE’s VOICE IS PERFECTION. eric’s love-gaze-pinning eyes got me weak af. my man was in LOVE LOVE with ariel. CHEMISTRY WAS CHEMISTRY-ING. and grimsby was me tbh… he made it his full mission to get eric and ariel together and i love him for that.

look at them! just two beautiful nerds in love. yeah, im going back to the cinema tonight to watch it again idc if i just get three hours of sleep it will be time well-spent 😭🧡

[shoeshineyboy]

the bullshit never ends. collection of tweets from my country’s continuing downward spiral into hell

[gunsatthaphan]

“in the end, we get to be together.”

[chirpy-chips]

BYE Sp1atoon!!! 🧡💙

[quetzalpapalotl]

Love/soulmates but like as a curse, I love you pathetically desperately despite all that's good for me and can't live without you.

[cute-as-buttons]

bro speaking of farewell ours is over 😤 do u wanna see the pictures

YES I DO!!

[granitxhka]

"we have 4 finals left to play guys focus" "real arsenal fans aren't celebrating until the season is over" for the love of everything that is beautiful in the world, shut up

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

the thing with the "not like one of these store-bought [pirates]" line is that he's right. calico jack is literally right. the fact that stede designed and bought his boat is fucking mind-boggling, when you're a pirate you get your ship by stealing it from somebody else, you don't design your fucking ship. i love stede but i don't blame anyone for not standing up for him with that incredibly direct line, like. sorry, cap, what do you want me to say?? he's right.

[zingaplanet]

We didn't appreciate this era enough.

Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray (The big four) together one last time as professional tennis players in Laver Cup 2022:

[lightbluetown]

have a GREAT ofmd s2 day and do not forget: