Mother Earth by Within Temptation

Mother Earth, Within Temptation's second album, came out in the Netherlands at the end of 2000 on DSFA Records, and it is the record that turned Sharon den Adel and Robert Westerholt's band from Dutch underground favorites into a proper phenomenon. Where the debut Enter still wallowed in gothic metal, this one reaches for the sky: soaring symphonic arrangements, Celtic touches, and den Adel's crystalline voice floating over songs steeped in fantasy and nature.

It was a sleeper. The album crept onto the Dutch chart at number eighty-two, and only when "Ice Queen" went out a second time did it climb all the way to number three, two years after release. It went double platinum at home, platinum in Germany and gold in Belgium, spread across Europe through a string of reissues, and by 2011 had reportedly sold 800,000 copies.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.