France's United Rock Nations recently conducted an interview with WITHIN TEMPTATION frontwoman Sharon Den Adel about her new solo project, MY INDIGO. You can listen to the entire interview via the SoundCloud widget below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). On the origins of MY INDIGO: Sharon: "I've been touring with WITHIN TEMPTATION my whole young, adult life. I've never done anything else except WITHIN TEMPTATION and also because it's something that really comes from the heart and it's my passion and I really love doing it. But, after so many years, some things happened through the years that I really never had time to — all the highs and lows in life, I never had time to process that and I was close to a burnout a few years ago. A lot of things happened. My father got really ill and I [found] that I had writer's block in combination with that, so, I didn't know how to continue. A lot of things came up from my past that I needed to think about, like, 'Okay, I need to re-evaluate what I want to do with the next 20 years of my life and why can't I write now because something is blocking me?' I found out that I needed to make some kind of music at this time because I didn't feel the music for WITHIN TEMPTATION to write something, I wasn't inspired, I didn't have any inspiration because WITHIN TEMPTATION is epic, big and powerful type of music. I didn't feel big and powerful at the time. I felt I had a lot of things to deal with, so, I wanted to stay close to what I was feeling, then other music came out. Instead of big and powerful WITHIN TEMPTATION kind of songs, it became very vulnerable, small songs. I wanted to do something different and explore that. I couldn't write WITHIN TEMPTATION type of music, so I thought, 'Maybe I could write this so maybe it will come back. Maybe I can get back the magic of writing songs for WITHIN TEMPTATION again.'" On whether she considers MY INDIGO to be therapeutic: Sharon: "Yeah, absolutely. Music has always been a catalyst for me, like, it's a cleaning process. [Laughs] It's always worked for me, it's always been healing and always been a way for me to deal with things. Not everything that I write is autobiographical but there are things in there that are. For me, it's always been healing to sing and to make music and to write music and to write about certain subjects. Anyway, this was the same thing for me, but with different type of songs I needed to write this time. Eventually when I did start to write for MY INDIGO and accepted that I had to do this first, I came back to WITHIN TEMPTATION also again, then I felt, like, 'Okay, I have the space to evaluate my emotions and to process that.' And then there was new space because of that for WITHIN TEMPTATION to be more powerful and to feel more powerful again after that." On sharing the fact she had writer's block through MY INDIGO: Sharon: "I think those things are kind of personal and I think, especially, you have to theorize with yourself what you want to do with the things that you're dealing with. If you're going to tell everybody, everybody is going to have an opinion about it. These are the kind of things you talk about after you have done it, not before you're going to do it because it's only going to make people restless and that's unnecessary. First, I had to figure out for myself what I wanted to do, then how I was going to do this." On the status of the next WITHIN TEMPTATION studio album: Sharon: "Well, we're still working very hard. We hope that at the end of this year, somewhere, there's going to be a new album out. It's going to be a very big surprise for everybody how that's going to sound. [Laughs] For me, I say that with every album, but this time, people are going to be 'Okay… new WITHIN TEMPTATION album? Okay…' [Laughs] 'I need to process this.' It's a heavy album. Not that we're such a heavy band, but for us, it's a new road again and also something that I learned from MY INDIGO, lots of things, like for the melody lines that I've written. I think it's going to be a big surprise for you guys." MY INDIGO's self-titled debut album was released April 20. WITHIN TEMPTATION's most recent studio album, "Hydra", was released in North America in 2014 via Nuclear Blast Entertainment.
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