AFTER FOREVER Frontwoman Talks About New Album 'Remagine'

Floor Jansen, vocalist with Dutch Metal band AFTER FOREVER, spoke to the webmaster of U.K. fan site After Forever UK immediately after the band made their U.K. debut appearance at the Bloodstock Festival in Derby, on Saturday, September 3. Floor talked about their Bloodstock gig, the possibility of returning to the U.K. and the band's new album, "Remagine", which was released in the Benelux countries on September 8. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

After Forever UK: [The new album title is] a combination of "reflections" and "imagine." Are these the two themes for the album?

Floor Jansen: "Yeah, basically. It was hard for me to find one word or a thing that would represent all the lyrics because they have several very different subjects. and you can seperate into 1 part that's like a relection on this world or on myself, may represent the more personal lyrics I've wrote. I always write avout things that happen in the world that affected me, you know like that thing that happened in Beslan, Russia now a year ago. And when that happened I was so shocked that something like that happen just because two groups of people are different because of religion, race or whatever. And that they can do that to each other, and make a solution like that to a problem. So those are reflections on situations and my own feelings and the imagine or imagination part: my lyrics are more about dreams, i've written several lyrics about dreams because I am quite a dreamer, I have heavy dreams. They are fascinating to me, because in your dreams you can be anybody, you can do anything and all kinds of things can happen to you. You can wake up and you're just not sure what happened, if things were real or not. And that just fascinates me so I've written several lyrics about that, that's more the imagination side. It's not that literal, but I think 'Remagine' as aname just really fits the music and the atmospher and everything of the album, so it's reflection, imagination. I don't know where the word popped up — it's of course a non-existent word!"

After Forever UK: If you could summarize the album, to tell people to go out and get it, how would you describe it?

Floor Jansen: "Well, somebody asked me in another interview, 'Can you give me three words for the album?' And I said: heavy, melodic and typically AFTER FOREVER. And I think that's it. Because it has the most heavy sound ever, it's very melodic — it's maybe back to 'Decipher' in a melodic kind of way. It's not complicated like 'Invisible Circles', but it's still heavy. And you have some very refreshing and new elements with which we have been experimenting, like we always do. A song like 'Attendance' has some industrial elements, inspired by Bas' Samael, where there's a heavy beat in it. Songs as 'Forever' could have been on 'Decipher' — that's the last song, 'Forever'. And 'Come' is like a very heavy, typically AFTER FOREVER song but then... newer. The shortest thing I can say is heavy, melodic and typically AFTER FOREVER. I think you just have to listen to it. The reaction so far as been very, very positive you know. So I think people will like it."

Read the entire interview at www.after-forever.co.uk.