After Forever Unveils New Album at The Key Club
A listening party for After Forever's new album took place at the Key Club's Plush Lounge in Hollywood on August 3rd. Lead singer Floor Jansen was in attendance along with guitarist Sander Gommans as the new album and video were unveiled. As an added treat Jansen performed a stripped down version of three songs. Gommans accompanied her on guitar for the song 'Equally Destructive' from the new album, and then Jansen sang along with a pre-recorded piano track for the two other songs, which were a cover of Hearts 'Alone', and the b-side ballad 'Lonely'. It was a privilege to hear Jansen's powerful, theatrical voice in such an intimate setting. The new album is definitely one of the bands best efforts. It heads in a symphonic direction with strings and synths emphasizing the heavy metal rhythms and Jansen's melodic voice. The band has been progressing from death metal to a more symphonic metal direction with each album and this new effort really blends the bands different influences together.
When asked about the musical direction of After Forever's new self titled album Gommans had this to say: "We use a lot of different styles and we have a lot of different influences and you hear that on this album. We don't want to be considered just a "goth" metal band. I think we write music that is more aggressive than your average goth-metal band or female fronted band. Its not that we don't like the goth thing I just think we are heavier than that. I think this new album really represents us as a band and all of our many influences." This will be the first album After Forever has released in America, though the band has been releasing albums in Europe successfully since 2000. Both Jansen and Gommans were very excited about the new album and their endeavor to tackle the American market. Gommans was especially excited when he was presented a set of 'He-Man' dolls from Nuclear Blast USA. Gommans' is a fanatical collector of paraphernalia from that particular 1980's fantasy cartoon series.
The new album, "After Forever" will be released on September 25, 2007 in the US.