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| Studio album by Within Temptation | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Released | January 22, 2014 | |||
| Recorded | 2013 | |||
| Genre | Heavy metal[1] Symphonic rock[2] |
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| Length | 49:16 90:50 (with bonus disc) |
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| Label | Nuclear Blast Dramatico BMG Universal Music |
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| Producer | Daniel Gibson | |||
| Within Temptation chronology | ||||
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The writing process of the album began in 2012, and at the first half of the year the band had six songs written already.[7] The album was originally scheduled to be released worldwide in September, by their new label, BMG[8][9] and in the Netherlands by Universal Music.[10]
On June 16, without finishing the whole album, the band went on to record the first music video for the new album.[11] During a series of statements about the recording progress of the album, Westerholt stated that the album would contain growls.[12] In the middle of May, bassist Jeroen van Veen went to the studio to record the bass base for the first five songs.[13] The band eventually got a North American sign deal with Nuclear Blast. The band also established a licensing deal with Dramatico for the United Kingdom release of the album.[14] Once the drumming and vocal recording were complete, the final guitar recordings started on August 26[15] and finished on October 22.[16]
On August 30, the band announced that the lead single "Paradise (What About Us?)" would be released as an EP, which was also set to feature three tracks from the upcoming album in their demo form, being them "Let Us Burn", "Silver Moonlight" and "Dog Days". Upon making this announcement, den Adel said: "By releasing these demos we want to invite you in our home studio and show how we capture song ideas at an early stage of creating a new album. These demo versions are far from their final sound on the album, but will give you a hint of what we’re working on. It will be fascinating to hear how the end result will sound like, once the album is released.". After announcing that the lead single would contain a guest musician, on September 13 the band officially announced that Tarja Turunen was set to appear as a special vocalist on the title song.[3]
As the title, the sound composition of the album was said to be varied, as Westerholt said, also referring to the album title, that they "wanted it to be a real Within Temptation record, but heavier, more musically challenging, pushing borders and frontiers with new elements and influences, and at the same time bring back more from our early metal roots... a bit like the past and future at the same time.". During an interview for Ultimate Guitar Archive, den Adel said that the main improvement on the last two records, in which is the transition to the symphonic metal itself to a more varied and multi-oriented sound, came from the fact that the band was considering itself "being in a box" where it could only sound in a restricted way inside its own genre and, having sold out all the possible elements in their 2007 release The Heart of Everything, the band decided to "let all boundaries go musically where [they] were not allowed to go" and improve their sound with "anything [that] can come out" and fit on the album.
source wikipedia.com
