Ivar de Graaf

Ivar de Graaf — Dutch drummer — was Within Temptation's drummer in two spells, including the band's formative phase. Within Temptation emerged in 1996 in the Netherlands and is, alongside Nightwish and After Forever, one of the bands that created symphonic metal as a genre. De Graaf is on Enter (1997), the debut, and on Mother Earth (2000), the album that carried the band internationally and sold hundreds of thousands of copies in Europe. That early phase is particular. Within Temptation began much closer to doom and gothic metal — slow tempos, heavy atmosphere, a female voice over low-tuned guitars — and only later moved to the symphonic format of wide choruses that would make it one of the genre's biggest bands. The drumming followed that transformation: from slow, heavy patterns to arrangements that must support orchestration and song structure. De Graaf is on both sides of that change.