ReVamp – ReVamp (2010)

Floor is back!!, and she is back with a vengeance. Two years have passed since After Forever went caput, and ever since the announcement of ReVamp was made, people were expecting nothing less than a great release from Floor. ReVamp’s self-title debut is nothing short of what ever people expected from this all-star project.

With Floor on the driver seat she recruited guitar wizard Waldemar Sorychta and keyboard maestro Joost van den Broek. Composing the 14 songs presented on this album with these two musicians (and Koen Herfst on drums), she has gone back to the times when WE used to like After Forever. With a more Gothic Metal oriented sound and not focusing on her experimentation with a more ‘Heavy Metal’ style of singing she used in the last few AF albums.

With Joost behind the keyboards and arrangements, you know they are extremely symphonic and very epic. He also manages to pull of nice ballads like “Sweet Curse” (a duet with Russell Allen). The choir arrangements are as good as ever, and the overall symphonic feeling to this album is top notch, we wouldn’t expect anything less from these musicians.

Having Waldemar Sorychta on guitars guarantees you very solid riffing and a powerful foundation to the music as well. While we would love to hear more experimentation from Waldermar (like on Enemy of the Sun, Grip Inc), we are very satisfied that he kept things simple and catchy in order to allow Floor’s voice to shine and the keyboards to flow nicely. The drumming is the only instrument that for us does not shine as much, but is still pretty good.

There are several guest appearances like Russell Allen on “Sweet Curse”, Björn 'Speed' Strid in “In Sickness ‘Till Death Do Us Part (Disdain)”, and George Oosthoek providing the grunts on “Here’s My Hell”. This is getting to be quite a trend in recent Gothic Metal and Nuclear Blast releases and we completely dig it since it gives sometimes a different (or complementary) sound to the bands having guests over.

ReVamp has started off their career with a very impressive first release. Something that we completely expected from Floor Jansen, and we hope this band continues to improve in the future. With a very powerful sound, they are here to compete directly with Epica, Edenbridge, Leaves’ Eyes, etc. to be one of the best Gothic Metal bands in the scene and by having Floor on the vocals, they already get to the top 10.

Release: May 26th, 2010 (Europe) July 27th. 2010 (USA)

Country: Netherlands