Floor Jansen Discusses ReVamp’s North American Tour Debut + More

By Andrew Bansal

Known for her work as lead vocalist in the Dutch symphonic metal band After Forever and now the new frontwoman of Nightwish, Floor Jansen formed her own band ReVamp in early 2010, following the split of After Forever, and through the two studio albums ReVamp has released so far, she has explored different facets of her singing and musicianship that weren’t evident in anything she did previously. ReVamp’s sophomore effort ‘Wild Card’ was released in late 2013 via Nuclear Blast Records, and now the band is ready to embark upon their first ever North American tour as opening act to Iced Earth and Sabaton through April and May. A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to Floor about this tour and lots more. Check out the conversation below.

Floor, it’s good to have you again on Metal Assault. ReVamp is yet to play live in North America which is about to change soon, but so far you’ve played shows in other parts of the world. How has the response been from the audiences?

Well, so far we’ve played in various parts Europe with ReVamp, and I think most people are actually quite surprised about the heaviness of the band. A lot of people know me from the After Forever days and they know me nowadays from Nightwish, and those bands are a little less heavy than ReVamp is. So we’ve had a lot of feedback saying ReVamp is definitely heavier than that and they’ve liked the complexity of it. I’m definitely doing some more screaming and growls in this band. We’ve received nothing but positive reactions. It’s really cool to see.

I believe you did a fundraising campaign recently. What was that exactly for?

Yeah, we did a Kickstarter campaign to fund touring in general, because we’ve done a European tour, doing some shows in the Netherlands and in the countries around it, but now we have this North American tour which will be followed by a South American one. So we’ve always had the ambition to reach all these territories but financially it was not possible. Because of this Kickstarter campaign we were able to say yes to the tour offers.

I think those kinds of campaigns are the way forward for artists because you’re getting money directly from fans and you’re giving them something in return.

In a way, yes. For certain things it’s great and I’ve noticed that for a lot of the fans it was nice to be indeed more directly involved in what an artist is doing. Not everyone thinks this way, but fortunately a lot of people did and they liked to help us out. In return we had very cool things for them and also the fact that we can tour and we can come out and reach a lot of the people that backed us is the reward.

Talking of the latest album ‘Wild Card’, you had some guest musicians on it as well, and one of them was Devin Townsend. How was it working with him?

It was cool! We didn’t see each other because he was in Canada and our studio is in the Netherlands, so we sent him the ideas and he worked on it in his studio. But it was great to see what he did with the material and the feedback to it as well. I can tell he liked it, and it was a huge honor.

The album came out in September everywhere but since you haven’t played live in North America so far, this tour will be the proper launch of the album, right? That’s how it works now. Bands have to play live for them to be able to sell anything.

Yes, indeed! I’m super happy that it is happening now. There’s only that much time we can tour, specially since I’m in Nightwish. My schedule is limited for ReVamp. So it’s great that we can do this now, and it’s a six-week tour so it’s a long run, we have a lot of areas to cover and hopefully after that people will like ReVamp even more.

For ‘Wild Card’, what was the songwriting process like and how much of the music did you write?

For this album we actually started off writing with the whole group, but it was mainly the guitar player Jord Otto and the keyboard player Ruben Wijga who came up with ideas where I would put vocal lines and lyrics onto, unlike on the first album for which I also wrote a lot of instrumental stuff. I didn’t do that on this album on purpose because everything I write is slightly more poppy and basic. We wanted a heavier, darker album this time and Ruben and Jord’s ideas really fit into that. We also invited Joost van den Broek who was the keyboard player for After Forever and the co-writer and producer of the first ReVamp album, to join again but now as producer, and somehow he became the songwriting process. He came with ideas but his main role was to help finish off the songs. This is my seventh studio album, second ReVamp album, but our first written like this. So it was nice to have someone around with experience whom I worked with a lot of times before and trust blindly to work on it like this. We’re happy with the production even though I was already touring with Nightwish when that was halfway done. I added my vocal lines when an instrumental idea was there and usually the song kind of changed a little bit or finalized after the vocal line came into it. That worked really well this time.

Did you, or will you ever write or record ReVamp vocals or lyrics while on tour with Nightwish?

No, not at all. I can’t do those two things at the same time. They are two different worlds for me.

With the heavier sound on this album, how much of a challenge was it for you to adjust vocally?

Well, it was my idea and it was included in the songwriting ideas when we started this album. We wanted to make it heavier, I wanted to be able to put in more various things and look for extremes, so extremely high, extremely low, extremely heavy and extremely soft. So I played around with that and there’s more raw singing, which was an idea, not something that had to happen. If it didn’t fit to the song or if I wouldn’t sound proper in terms of a certain quality of what comes out of my mouth when I decide to scream and growl and if it sounded stupid (laughs), then we wouldn’t have done it. But luckily it all fell in place. Of course I worked on techniques for the screaming and growling parts which was new for me. During the recordings it was funny to hear my own voice sound like that. Even Joost who has worked with me for more than 10 years said that it sounded so different that he couldn’t believe it was me (laughs). Of course live, it was another challenge because I never sang it live before. So I did have to grow into my technique there. But it became natural and it’s great fun, actually, specially because a lot of people that know me didn’t quite get that and it was funny to see their surprised faces whenever I started to growl. People were like, “The guys in the band are not standing in front of the microphone so it still must be her singing. Oh my God!” (laughs)

So, do you think you’ll continue in this heavier direction on future ReVamp music as well?

I can imagine, yeah, because it’s also a nice contrast to Nightwish and to a lot of bands with female singers.

You were saying earlier that your schedule for this band is limited because of Nightwish. Is that how it’s going to be with ReVamp where you’ll be touring and releasing albums only once in a while?

Yeah, obviously Nightwish is way, way bigger and schedules years ahead. So I can’t look into the future but the way things are happening now already, we’re going to the studio with Nightwish this summer, so that means I have one full year to tour with ReVamp which is enough to do a lot of things with it. But yeah, it does need to be aimed at that schedule, but on the other hand, to sing in a band as big as Nightwish is never bad as ReVamp. We can have a lot more people reached out to ReVamp just out of curiosity after getting in touch with me in Nightwish and not knowing me before.

Visit ReVamp on the web:
ReVampMusic.com
facebook.com/ReVamp
twitter.com/ReVampOfficial 

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