METROPOOL, Hengelo, support-act: REVAMP

Het uiteenvallen van After Forever doet me nog steeds pijn en ik zal niet de enige zijn. Met haar nieuwe band ReVamp probeerde Floor Jansen, een van de beste zangeressen zo niet de beste in het circuit, weer voet aan de grond te krijgen. Dat lukte maar matig en mogelijk was haar burn-out daar ook een gevolg van. Haar leed vertelde ze zingend via het nummer I Lost Myself. Het enthousiasme van de redelijk goed gevulde zaal Metropool deed zichtbaar goed, maar persoonlijk konden de composities mij nog steeds niet boeien. Als voorproefje werd één nieuw nummer gespeeld namleijk Sins. Dat is op zich best een aardig gevarieerd nummer, maar ik moest wel wennen aan het feit dat Floor Jansen soms schreeuwde... toch wel jammer!

Epica gaf professioneel een nagenoeg vlekkeloze show en presenteerde een bloemlezing uit alle tot nu opgenomen muziek. Ook Epica speelde één nieuw nummer, Storm The Sorrow, en dat smaakte naar meer. De band is weliswaar niet vernieuwend maar zeer solide en heeft ongetwijfeld een uitstekende basis om zijn reputatie verder uit te bouwen. Aan het eind van de show was er een met gejuich ontvangen en zeer geslaagd duet tussen Simone Simons en Floor Jansen in Sancta Terra en Mark Jansen - doelend op Floor - brulde terecht: 'She's back on track'! Simone Simons oogde wat bleekjes en ze gaf aan dat ze best moe was, maar ze zong desalniettemin schijnbaar moeiteloos. Ze is van een verlegen meisje gegroeid naar een formidabele en zelfverzekerde frontvrouw. Hopelijk is haar accu weer opgeladen als de band over enkele maanden op wereldtournee gaat!

ENGELS:

A night of (gothic) female fronted metal nearby: not to be missed. So, off I went to the city just twenty minutes from my home to see Epica just before the release of their upcoming album Requiem For The Indifferent supported by ReVamp, the band Floor Jansen, of former lead singer for After Forever. It used to be the other way around and I can remember the days when Epica were supporting After Forever very well! I'm probably not the only one who is still feeling sorry for what happened with After Forever and it might have caused the burn-out of Floor Janen who had been suffering from the last six months. For me personally Floor is one of the best, if not thé best singer in the genre of female fronted metal and when Nightwish parted ways with Tarja Turunen I'd wished she would have been applying for a job with the Finnish masters of gothic metal. However, she chose to stay with After Forever, but the band broke up within some two years leaving Floor without a band and composers. The members of Afeter Forever went their own separate ways, leaving many fans in South America, the Netherlands and all around the world 'in mourning'.

Floor Jansen found new soul mates and started the band ReVamp. It became clear that ReVamp is certainly not a clone of After Forever, but rather purely female fronted metal. Their debut album was a huge disappointment to me because the style was so much more metal, less melodic and Floor was hardly using her magnificent operatic voice anymore. For Floor, having played for larger venues, on big festivals and even in stadiums in South America, it must have been a huge disappointment to have to start from scratch again, playing smaller venues and in the role of support rather than main act. No wonder at all she became ill and had to take a break from music. Fortunately for all her fans, she's back! With her powerful voice and big smile she obviously enjoyed being back on stage. ReVamp played a set of around an hour featuring the ballad I Lost Myself.

According to Floor, the lyrics were autobiographical and indeed gave insight to her situation in the past year. The band played tight but as said, the compositions are not as catchy as the ones of After Forever, of course in my humble opinion. A bit more orchestral seemed the only new track ReVamp performed: Sins. Certainly a track with more subtlety and variety compared to the other songs, but the only part I didn't particularly like was the part where Floor was rather shouting then singing... from my perspective that was a 'sin'! The venue had almost been sold out and it was nice to see so many enthusiastic responses from the fans and so many happy faces. The current line-up of ReVamp consists of Matthias Landes on drums, Jaap Melman on bass, Jord Otto on guitar, Arjan Rijnen on guitar and Ruben Wijga on keyboards.

Epica today is a force to be reckoned with. The band is gigging regularly and did shows all over the world since their debut The Phantom Agony from 2003. Singer Simone Simons has grown into a self assured woman instead of the somewhat shy person she used to be in the early days. The line-up with Mark Jansen, Yves Huts, Coen Janssen, Isaac Delahaye and Ariën van Westerbeek seems stable and the band did a professional show. Although Simone looked a bit pale and admitted she was tired, she sang beautifully nonetheless. With her partner Oliver she speaks English and where she lives it's practically German so she found it a bit hard to speak in plain Dutch again.There were many old favourites during the show, but one of the highlights undoubtedly was a track from the forthcoming album called Storm The Sorrow a powerful bombastic song, clearly in the vein of the previous albums and certainly a great teaser for the fans. 

Epica combines film score music with bombastic orchestral metal and with guitarist Delahaye, Epica has more metal to offer, whereas former guitarist Ad Sluijter in my opinion tended more towards classical and film music, a less harder edged guitar player. A nice interlude giving Simone Simons a break was the instrumental Imperial March from the album The Classical Conspiracy: classical themes the metal way! As could be expected when these two bands perform together, but pure joy just the same, was the duet between Simone and Floor in the encore Sancta Terra and as Mark proclaimed when Floor left the stage: 'She's back on track'. A true statement indeed! Sound and lights were quite okay so altogether it was a great night. The only remark I would like to make is that I was puzzled by the 'traffic jam' on the way out of the venue: many people on the stairs and hardly any movement. In case of panic this pathway to the outside would surely not help to get people out safe and quickly...

Setlist ReVamp: Here's My Hell, All Goodbyes Are Sad, Break, Head Up High, Sweet Curse, Million, The Trail Of Monsters, Fast Forward, No Honey For The Damned, I Lost Myself, Kill Me With Silence, Disdain, Sins, Disgraced.

Setlist Epica: Samadhi, Resign To Surrender, Sensorium, Unleashed, Menace Of Vanity, Obsessive Devotion, Imperial March, Design Your Universe, Tides Of Time, Blank Infinity, Storm The Sorrow.

Encores: Sancta Terra, The Phantom Agony.