By the time Within Temptation released The Silent Force in 2004, they were shaping up as one of metal’s great new hopes. The Dutch band’s first two albums, 1997’s doomy, gothic-leaning Enter and 2000’s fantastical Mother Earth, had helped put symphonic metal on the map, but it was their third album that really grabbed people’s attention.
The Silent Force was a weightier, darker collection than its predecessors. Landing just a few months after Once, Nightwish’s genre-defining statement, that year saw the two bands stepping forward as the figureheads for a rising scene that was becoming a global commercial force.
