Vikram Shankar

Vikram Shankar is the keyboardist and pianist brought into Within Temptation's live line-up in 2025, taking on the role left by Martijn Spierenburg after twenty-three years. Born in 1994, he arrived with a reputation built outside the symphonic metal circuit. He is known for his work in Redemption, the American progressive metal band, and for Silent Skies, the piano-and-voice project he maintains with Tom Englund of Evergrey — a repertoire of restrained music, without drums or guitar, far removed from Within Temptation's orchestral scale. That breadth is what the role demands. The band's repertoire runs through four distinct stylistic phases, from the gothic doom of the 1990s to the electronic layers of Bleed Out (2023), and the keyboard has to alternate between full symphonic orchestration, atmospheric textures and modern programming within a single show. It is one of the group's most versatile posts, and one of its least visible.