"We often felt like the strange duck on the festival bill because there was a woman in the band." How two modern metal icons united for a collaboration over a decade in the making

Tarja Turunen and Sharon den Adel looking at the camera seriously.

Within Temptation and Nightwish were the two biggest breakout bands of Europe's celebrated 90s symphonic metal scene, so for many, a collaboration between their two beloved singers seemed inevitable. It wouldn't be until 2013, however, that Sharon den Adel and Tarja Turunen - by then long gone from Nightwish - finally sung on a track together. In 2024, Metal Hammer sat both vocalists down to discover the story behind one of modern metal's great team-ups.

When Within Temptation and Nightwish released their debut albums in 1997, there wasn’t a name for the kind of music they made. Within Temptation’s Enter, released in April, took obvious influence from gothic metal bands like Paradise Lost, but its grandiose, elegiac compositions and symphonic undertones hinted at the direction the band would eventually take. Conversely, Nightwish’s Angels Fall First, released in November, approached metal from a different direction, drawing more directly and heavily on folk and classical music.