Within Temptation To Play Australia For The Very First Time At Knotfest

Pioneers of dark and anthemic music, WITHIN TEMPTATION, has captivated audiences for over twenty years and the Dutch powerhouse modern rockers will head to Australia for the very first time in 2025. Their career spans eight studio albums, over four million records sold and dominating the Billboard Mainstream Rock Charts, WITHIN TEMPTATION are renowned for their powerful live performances. Hi Fi Way spoke to vocalist Sharon den Adel about playing Australia for the very first time at Knotfest and sideshows.

Not long now to Knotfest Australia, you must be really excited to be heading down to Australia for the very first time.
Well, it’s actually my second time, but the first time with the band. I’m really looking forward to that. The first time I came to Australia, I was really young. I think I was like five or six years old. I’m looking forward to coming back. It’s like a full circle again for me doing that for the second time in my life and then in a very different age of course.

Has there been a lot of pressure from the fans to come to Australia?
Yeah, it’s way overdue and I understand because a lot of them had to come to Europe to see us play, and some of them actually did. We have like one massive fan from Australia who was there throughout so many shows over the years, and I know she’s going to be there.

How do you pass the time on the long flight to Australia?
Hopefully with a sleeping pill will knock me out! I’m going to stop in Thailand and have some family time there and then go on to Australia, some of the guys are going like twenty-four hours straight to Australia. The way back is going to be more difficult than the way over.

Do you approach playing Knotfest any differently to your own club show?
Yes, more so because of the fact that we only play forty minutes, which is really short, and we haven’t played forty minutes in many years. That’s something to get used to and work out which songs we aren’t able to play. Luckily, we have two sideshows that we are going to do and we can play as long as we want to more or less. We haven’t played in Australia before. That does make you wonder what would people like to hear in forty minutes.

How do you cram eight albums into forty minutes with playing a melody of thirty seconds of each song or something like that?
I’m not sure if people will like that as either!

What are you looking forward to most about touring Australia? Do you get much of a chance to get out and about and have a look around?
Well, we are going to be there almost two weeks, we only have five shows, so I really hope to see something of Australia. I’m looking forward to that. We have a lot of time in between and I’m really looking forward to discovering the country. It’s such a beautiful country, what I’ve seen from on the internet and my photo books from when I was there the first time.

Are there any other bands on the bill that excite you, that you want to check out either before or after you’ve played?
I know there’s a lot of iconic bands playing and I still have to figure out when we’re able to come and see those bands. We’re going to try and see everything, but I know that within the band, has different tastes of music, such A Day To Remember and Slipknot of course. We’ve seen them a lot of times already on different festivals.

Bleed Out is a fantastic album, do you think that one’s going to be a hard one to top when you start thinking about album number nine?
Well, that’s what they say with every album we bring out. It’s always difficult to do a new album when your heart and soul is still attached to the latest one. It’s been almost two years since we’ve released it. It’s always difficult to get into a new vibe of a wanting to do something completely different that is surprising again, but it’s difficult to let go of the old one, especially when you’re still playing those songs on a very large scale. We are playing a lot of festivals this summer and of course, Australia. Then you’re playing these songs again, a lot of them also from the latest album. It’s difficult to detach. When you write a new album, you need time without those songs, because otherwise when you get back into it you need to be able to create something completely new. To get these new ideas, you need to forget what you’ve done before that.

Do you have to stop touring and have a clean slate before starting the creative process?
Exactly, we have started writing already, and we do have a picture of which direction we want to go, but even when you start at a certain point, it will change a hundred times before you reach the finish line. It’s difficult to say which direction it will eventually go. A lot of the inspiration and the influence comes from being out on the road and being in different places, different cities, different countries. It’s a small world after world. A lot of things that happen in one country is happening in a lot of countries at the moment. So, there’s a lot to talk about and a lot to write about, a lot of stories to tell. I think that’s what we mostly are about actually, is the storytelling. In the past we were mostly into talking about history, things that happened in the past. The second World War inspired us a lot actually on certain albums, but now with this latest album, it’s been mostly the current news that inspires us with everything that’s happening in the world at the moment, I’m curious if we can detach ourselves from that and do something completely different, maybe even get our inspirations from something else than war and all the negativity in the world.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Within Temptation at Knotfest on the following dates, tickets from Destroy All Lines…

And Sideshows on the following dates, tickets from Destroy All Lines…