As their first release on Nuclear Blast, After Forever have an eponymous album out, which spans ten years of musical adventures. One of the leaders of the symphonic goth metal scene, After Forever reconciles past and future in an album that sounds like a panorama of their career. We met Floor Jansen, female vocalist.

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-You have a new Lp out in April, called ‘After Forever’, your first album for Nuclear Blast: how did it happen?

-Floor: When we stopped working with Submission Records, in June last year, we were of course already seeing what record companies we would like to work with, as we came in the luxurious position to be able to choose ourselves. There was a lot of interest coming from many companies. So, when we were recording, we took our time to see which company would work the best for us and decided that Nuclear Blast would be that part, so we signed a contract and started to work together. The album was already finished then. There a licence deal, the album is made together with a group called The Entertainment Group, a group based in Holland where we formed a certain corporation with and then licensed it to Nuclear Blast. So it’s a brand new way of working, a different way of artists being involved in the decision side of the things. It’s a very good structure, very healthy.

-What are, for you, the main differences between this album and the previous one, considering the sound, the recording, the atmosphere?

-Floor: I think it’s more extreme, in all its ways: it’s heavier, but also the symphonic parts and quiet and atmospherical parts have extra sound as well. We empathized every part of our music more, the total sound is better and heavier, as we had better opportunities to really build up a big sound, with heavier guitars, heavier guitar part sounds, vocals comes out better. We worked with a real orchestra from Prague, so to have this chance and all that definitely improved the sounding of the ensemble. All things are different, compared to the previous one.

-Did you intend to present it on stage with this real orchestra?

-Floor: Oh yes, but it’s a very complicated thing. We’ve done a show with an harmonic orchestra, with means only the brass instruments, it’s then different from a symphonic orchestra, and that was already a huge stage. It’s very difficult to make the sound and of course very expensive to work with an orchestra, because that’s a corporation, we would have to hire like forty or fifty people. It’s a huge thing, but dreaming is allowed, so we’ll see one day!

-And on a DVD format?

-Floor: That would be even better, even if that’s more difficult. We checked out how much it would cost, and it’s a huge project because we need a mobile recording center, and even two, one for the band and one for the orchestra. It’s a huge thing to do, but you never know where it could might lead to!

-About the production: who did it?

-Floor: We worked with a Dutch producer called Gordon, and it’s the first time we worked with a producer, as we only had so far engineers but not somebody special at the production from the beginning. We wrote the songs and, in the finalizing process, we had him coming to rehearsals with us and finalizing the songs, maybe changing things in the structure or maybe little things we didn’t see, and then started to record it. Gordon is very well known in Holland for a lot of Dutch productions, not necessarily metal productions, but his sound and his way of mixing is really something we liked, and he really wanted to do a band like ours, so it was quite a challenge to work together, but we’re very proud of the result.

-Would you enjoy yourself to be more implicated in it or do you feel more like a musician?

-Floor: We always have been involved in the production in the way that I write my own lyrics and my vocal lines. I also work the choir things and music line is made by me. So I’m also implicated in the writing process, and I’m not the one who will say that I need more guitars in the sound. Production wise, that’s not my thing. We have Joost, our keyboards player and our guitarist have a big talent for that, so we’re all very comfortable leaving them do that, and also because they are the mean writers. They start with the music, write the basic things, record it and then I start making my vocal lines, we demo that again, the result of that comes to the rest of the band and we start rehearsing together. That’s how we work.

-This new album is a sort of a sum of all styles you have explored before: are you afraid in a way to be categorized as metal gothic band with a female singer and was it a way to show all you can do in different styles?

-Floor: Yes, absolutely, because I think our music contains both gothic and metal and also some things which neither both. To describe that in only one sentence is always very difficult in any ways because in our albums we made an evolution which is not always logical. Our third album, ‘Invisible Circles’ was way more progressive, way more complicated that the one before, then ‘Remagine’ came, totally different again and I think this album, ‘After Forever’ is like a compilation, a melting pot of everything we have done : the progressive stuff from ‘Invisible Circles’ but also the more melodic and the typical metal thing that we had in ‘Prison of Desire’ and ‘Decipher’, and also the things we tried to experiment in ‘Remagine’ with more industrial things: all these ingredients come back, but now of course in a fresh new code, a new modern way and a different approach and we’re feeling this is really representative of everything we’ve done in the past and shows are we are today and how we’ll be in the future, so we found therefore this self titled album very appropriate.

-If we consider this record as a kind of state of affairs for the band, is it any new directions you would like to take for your future music?

-Floor: Well, I think it’s there a beginning for the new future, a new start, both musical as everything since we’re now with Nuclear Blast and everything grow on, it’s a good moment to have an album and have a moment where you can say this is After Forever, this is what we do, not just gothic or metal or progressive but all of this and it’s all we are and It’s a good beginning of a new start and a new future

-Did you or do you have role models as a singer?

-Floor: Not really, it’s not as if it was one or two people that have always inspired me listening to since I was younger. I have a lot of people that I do admire, from all kind of scenes, pop music or rock, or metal or opera or musical. I think that everybody who have a big voice, good trained voice and a perfect control over it, that inspires me.

-If you could, would you practice and records solo stuff with different kinds of music, as classical and opera, for example?

-Floor: I have done that, not on shows or something, but I started studying in 99 at the Rockacademy, and during my studies there, I wanted to know more about both musical and opera, because both things are suitable for my voice and I wanted to explore it. I started studying that already and after I finished with Rockacademy, I started one year in a music theatre, for musicals, and after that one year, opera, just to see if I can do it and how I would do it, if I liked it or not, because I do feel I have natural talent and a voice that gifted with many things. I’m very happy with that and feel almost obliged to explore it. I also thank my parents who gave me the opportunity to do that by studying, and also the band for giving me the opportunity to write my own music and my own vocal lines. I always had the freedom to explore myself into using many different styles of voicing within the band. That’s a great luxurious position, which is even better than singing operas from Puccini or whoever, because that’s something already written, you have to do singing in a very specific way, it’s not much freedom for your own interpretation, and if it’s any, it’s the director who tell you how to do it. In After Forever, I can do everything in my own way, so it’s a luxury I won’t give up yet. But I did study to be able to, maybe after After Forever, do something else, because I don’t think I’ll be doing After Forever for the rest of my life, but I wanna sing for the rest of my life. Then it’s good to be trained in many different ways.

-I’ve read that, after taking lessons yourself at the Dutch Rockacademy, you’re teaching yourself music, amongst other stuff…

-Floor: Yes, but not there. In my own private school, which is big word. I just give private lessons, singing lessons, to people who come to me. I also give performing lessons, give workshops, I also teach lyrics writing. That’s what I do next to the band.

-After Forever started as a death metal band, ten years ago: are you interested in extreme metal music?

-Floor: Oh, it was at the very very beginning! I was more, at the very beginning, when I started listening metal, I was into Machine Head, Pantera, Fear Factory, Metallica, and then I met friends who were listening to black metal, Immortal, Dimmu Borgir, especially early Dimmu Borgir stuff. And then I met the guys from the band and it was a mix of death and heavy metal. I was actually asked as a background vocalist because they had a grunter and they made quite extreme music. I started in 97 and, between 97 and 99, I became more and more close to the directions they took .Today I’m not in the very heavy stuff, even if I sometimes like it, but Slayer is too much for me! I still like extreme bands or Sepultura, but also music with no metal at all!

-We can find many different styles of music in this record, where the central idea was the energy, in all senses of the term…

-Floor: Yes, and musically, Joost and Anders and me are very interested in all kinds of music. Anders is the metal head of the band, more into Slayer and heavier stuff, and if it was up to him, the band would be way more heavier, but the balance is brought by Joost and me. I can’t grunt or scream so I can’t sing death metal. Joost likes metal but comes more in a progressive direction, even if he can also play all kind of styles, even salsa, jazz and blues and pop. And also my education and interests try to learn more from other genres, which make a nice melting pot of styles I guess. We find important to keep it interesting. But it’s very important to stay free. I have a big respect for bands such as Iron Maiden or Motorhead doing always the same thing, because of that. But you have to be able to do it. I wouldn’t like to be limited just because of the expectations of everybody; it’s about your own expectations which keeps you happy and at least what works for me work for us. I think that, style wise, we haven’t really change as much as The Gathering did, but we’ve definitely lost people after ‘Invisible Circles’, where people were missing some things. But I do think that, with this new album, those people will hopefully start to like it again, because the old elements and the typical atmosphere that people missed with our two last albums are back, and that’s important for people to know that this atmosphere is there again, combined with everything we’ve learned afterward.

-The good thing is then that every part in the audience can find himself in it, without feeling abandoned.

-Floor: That’s what we hope, to address to many different people. That’s always tricky, because people feel abandoned very fast, and everybody want hundreds copies of the first album, which is often how it goes: this is as the band is and how he should be; when it’s different, people don’t like it, especially with ‘Invisible Circles’ which took years to people to like it. Now, we have reactions from people saying that, when it came out, it wasn’t their stuff, too different but, they had to get used to it and after a while, they now think that maybe it’s the best record we ever did. That’s funny but great. Also, the scene has been growing and evolving and soon beginning to be all the same thing, so it wasn’t our thing, we wanted to get out if it, with a little pressure from people liking it that way. This scene became immediately conventional, wanting to keep things the way they were, but as soon as people finally started to do some experimental things, now it’s more opened up and more daring I guess.

-What bands made you wish to be in a band yourself?

-Floor: When I started, there were no female fronted bands yet, only The Gathering was there, and I didn’t really know the eighties female singer like Doro. I knew I wanted to have a band like that the first time I saw The Gathering, as many bands were fronted with male singers and it not a good idea to sing like men in metal.

-Your favourite records?

-Floor: I don’t have particular old time favourites, but I change every once in a while, when I don’t like old albums and then re-likes it again, it’s not as if I had an all time favourite album since I started my own music, and in fact with any band in particular, except once in a while, as Rammstein or Judas Priest, Sepultura. We toured with them and it was great. It’s always hard for a band to overcome something like the departure of his previous famous member, as for Nightwish, even if the new guy or the new girl is appreciated after a while. I’m really happy to have my own band and keep it that way because lots of people don’t have that luxury. I also like Annie Lenox, Cristina Aguilera because I like their voice.

-You artwork is generally very beautiful: do you think that nice artwork, as well as DVD’s, videos and stage shows are a way to fight the future disappearance of the record as object, and wish people to buy them instead of downloading?

-Floor: I think so, but I think that in our scene, in general, people are still album buying, they appreciate to have the material, the actual CD with the artwork with which is like a signature on it. It’s like betraying your band if you’re not buying it! For a lot of people, it’s still that way and I hope keeping that way in making something special for the fans by making it beautiful, by making special editions and special things in it. We’re always paying much attention in it, and it was difficult with Transmission. You need to spend a lot of money on it too, to get the artwork made, to have nice material to make it different from a simple CD.

-If it’s beautiful, people will buy it…

-Floor: That’s true, and I think that, in a way, we’re slowing growing into something different, with cd’s and DVD’s, which will one day be replaced by something else. But I hope that people will continue to buy something nice, as the old fashion touch of it! I’m very happy with our new artwork, because it’s something we were really experimenting for ‘Remagine’, as we wanted something different of the many bands of that scene doing kind of the same thing. We’ve always been one of the first bands changing and always trying to be original in our genre. This time, the album is like an overview of everything we are and we have this cover with the mega signal representing energy, which is the main theme for most of my lyrics, it’s not a concept album but an energetic album, and the mega sign also represent the sign of a new start or a start of a new beginning! It’s very difficult to have an artwork which represents the album but also the band and yourself, and to have to be right with it.

-Any video or DVD project?

-Floor: Not yet! We had this desire for many years now, but it wasn’t possible with Transmission Records. We have tons of material and we’re eager to do something with it!

Interview made in Paris in February 2007.
Thanks to Valérie from Nuclear Blast and Floor Jansen