Floor Jansen

AM : Your 5th album is released, how do you feel when you look back at your career ? Did you ever think or hope you'd be here when you were writing your first demos ?

Floor : Hope, yes of course but I never thought we could actually do all this. There are so many bands and so many singers and it’s an amazing thing that we came thru. We of course always worked hard for it and gave the band more then 100% but still, you need to be there at the right place and time also.

AM : Are you able to live from your music now or do you have other work ?

Floor : We all live from AF now but that has been a recent thing, before that we all studied and/or worked next to the band. I still give singinglessons though when I have some time left next to the band.

AM : Why did you end your label Transmission and how did you get a deal with Nuclear Blast ?

Floor : We made 4 full length albums plus all kinds of extra’s with Transmission and we felt it was time for a fresh start with a company more international and bigger to also make us get to the next level.

AM : You have some great guests on the new album as Doro and Jeff Waters, why these people ?

Floor : We wanted to point out that we a re a metalband and emphasise the heavy sound by these guests. Especially Jeff Waters of course. Doro is the leading lady in Female fronted rock/metal and we thought it would be great to make the crossover with her style and ours and also to make the mix between her rough rock voice and mine.

AM : The new album is called "After forever ", so I guess it's the true essence of After Forever, musically speaking, so what is this essence ?

Floor : The essence is a mixture of many styles and influences that we mix into our typical sound. On this album we feel al styles from all previous albums are melting into album, our musical conclusion so to speak. We also named it ‘After Forever’ because this feels like the beginning of a new start. A lot of bands have their very first album as a self titled one, we do it with the album that represents a new beginning.

AM : Are the lyrics also typically "After Forever " ?

Floor : I wrote them again so yes, in that respect they are. They deal with modern, earthly matters but also more personal ones. On ‘After Forever’ I wrote a few lyrics about energy, this became like a main theme for them (but this is NOT a concept album) Energy is always around us and inside of us in many various ways. That fascinated me and I wrote several songs about the several different forms of energy I started to see (so positive energy between people: Energize Me or the negative version: De-energized, the energy in nature: Evoke, or in time: Withering Time, or in dreams: Dreamflight)

AM : Who did the production of this new album and what did he brought ?

Floor : This was the first time we ever worked with a real producer, so far we did most of that ourselves but this time we involved a producer even before the recordings, at the end of our writing process. His name is Gordon Groothedde and he worked with rock bands from The Netherlands before like The Golden Earing. He was a 7th bandmember for a while but an objective one who can listen in a fresh way. That was a big input but his biggest influence is in the sound. He found a way to make a heavy sounding album despite all orchestral elements. It’s quite a job to keep every instrument in place when you have heavy drums, bass and guitars but also my voice with all its variations, plus a real orchestra, choir, etc, and he managed!

AM : Your planning is going to be very heavy the next months ?

Floor : Yep, we’ll do a festival tour with 4 other bands called the Earthshaker Roadshoch tour (did you get that ?)
17 days, 17 shows….
What’s left of us, no, just kidding, after that we’ll do some more clubshows here in the Netherlands and than hit the festival season, after that we’ll do a tour in North and South America. With Nuclear Blast as record label we get to go to way more countries as before so the idea is to tour as much as possible!

AM : I let you the last words, thanks a lot for your time !

Floor : I hope everybody, new fans but also old fans will enjoy our new work! Because it’s such a melting pot of all we ever did I know even the die hard Decipher and Prison of Desire fans can ones again find that typical sound back. We are happy we can start touring again and can’t wait to see you all soon at one of our concerts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!