Metal Hammer 3.1.2025

LIVE REVIEWS

WITHIN TEMPTATION
ANNISOKAY
FIRST DIRECT ARENA, LEEDS

Firepower and eye-popping spectacle from Holland's finest

WITHIN TEMPTATION'S MUSICAL horizons have expanded in tandem with their vision. As the Dutch behemoths have headed into ever more bombastic realms, they've built an ironclad reputation for eye-frazzling, grandiose live shows and tonight the signs of imminent spectacle are there from the start, with 20-foot Roman-style pillars curling around the set of support band, ANNISOKAY. The Germans' glistening, electronica-powered metalcore has a futuristic bent, a vibe they share with our headliners, but what they're missing is a knock-out banger to call their own.

The last time WITHIN TEMPTATION played Leeds Arena was in 2022, when they appeared with Evanescence as part of their co-headline Worlds Collide
tour. Returning tonight as sole bill toppers, the venue does feel a little ambitious for them, with only a small crowd assembled on the floor and plenty of unsold seats on the top tier. But if they've not quite levelled up to arenas on their own terms, they've long outgrown the venues of their past, and the band are packing the kind of show that needs to exist in huge spaces. Exploding onstage with We Go To War in a blaze of pyro and full-screen visuals, they sound impossibly huge, with Sharon den Adel rocking a long, floaty dress and gilded headdress, pushing her crystalline vocals to the limit.

2023's Bleed Out album was written in part about the Ukraine War, and accordingly, the set ripples with a sense of horror. It's there in the unsettling, beefy, tech metal riffs of the album's title track and the visuals for Don't Pray For Me, where Sharon glides between statues doused in blood. Later in the set, too, when she stands in front of a blazing screen for Supernova, the world burning crimson all around her, the effect is mesmerising. Following an anthemic A Fool's Parade with Ukrainian singer Alex Yarmak, the band exit the stage and give Alex his moment in the spotlight to address the ongoing bloodshed.

They might have little in common these days with the opulent, symphonic metal band that caught our attention in the late 90s, but Within Temptation are still capable of heart-stopping beauty. When ex-Nightwish singer Tarja Turunen joins them onstage for The Promise, the room takes a collective gasp. And when they unite again for a rallying Paradise (What About Us?), the energy in the room could fill a hundred arenas. They might not have sold this room out, but Within Temptation have never looked more at home.

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