After Forever

In February 2009, it was announced that After Forever had disbanded. Singer Floor Jansen and keyboardist Joost van den Broek both collaborated again in ReVamp and Star One, before Jansen eventually joined Nightwish as lead singer in 2013. Former rhythm guitarist Mark Jansen founded Epica in 2002 after his departure from After Forever and, in 2010, founded MaYaN, which included former After Forever members Sander Gommans and Jack Driessen.  Floor Jansen has appeared as a session or live vocalist for both Epica and MaYaN.

However, on October 23, 2024, the band announced they would reunite for a special 25th-anniversary concert on October 4 and 5, 2025 at 013 Poppodium in Tilburg, Netherlands, featuring a slightly modified line up, most notably missing Floor Jansen.

After Forever was originally assembled in 1995, under the name Apocalypse. They were originally a Gothic metal cover band with harsh male vocals. With the joining of vocalist Floor Jansen in 1997, their style and sound shifted towards Symphonic gothic metal, in order to give emphasis to her soprano voice, in contrast with the grunts and screams provided by Sander Gommans and Mark Jansen.

Their line-up at this point comprised Floor Jansen, Mark Jansen (no relation to Floor), Sander Gommans, Luuk van Gerven, Jack Driessen and Joep Beckers. Soon, the band began composing their own songs, and then they changed their name to After Forever, after the Black Sabbath song. In 1999, the band recorded two demos entitled "Ephemeral" and "Wings of Illusion", which drew the attention of the Dutch Transmission Records label, with whom the band signed a contract. Their debut album Prison of Desire  was recorded in 2000, featuring a guest appearance of Sharon den Adel of the Dutch band Within Temptation on the song "Beyond Me".

The album obtained very good reviews in Europe. By the end of the year, drummer André Borgman and keyboardist Lando van Gils joined the band, replacing Joep Beckers and Jack Driessen.

During the year 2000, Floor Jansen was invited to guest sing in Ayreon's Universal Migrator Part 1: The Dream Sequencer album. Ayreon is the most successful of the many projects by Dutch guitarist Arjen Anthony Lucassen and that album is only the first of many other collaborations with Floor Jansen.

In 2001, the band released the album Decipher, which featured for the first time live classical instruments and a live choir. The complex arrangements of the new compositions pushed After Forever's music even more towards the Symphonic metal genre. By the end of 2001, After Forever appeared as rising stars on the dynamic scene of Dutch metal, which included bands like The Gathering, Within Temptation, Gorefest and Ayreon.

Their second album, Decipher (2001) had received very positive reviews and their name was well known in the underground scene of the Netherlands. Critics were impressed by the remarkable musicianship of the young members of the band and in particular by Floor Jansen's vocals, both in studio and in live performances. In contrast with these premises for a bright future, the relationships within the band were not so idyllic. Soon after the release of Decipher, After Forever faced a strong creative contrast between founding member and guitarist Mark Jansen and the rest of the band.

Mark Jansen had been the main composer of the band together with Sander Gommans and his love for movie soundtracks and classical music had had a strong influence on the musical style of After Forever’s first two albums, Prison of Desire (2000) and Decipher.  Moreover, his interest for religious and moral themes had characterized his lyrics for many songs, often collected under a common title (e.g. The Embrace That Smothers and My Pledge of Allegiance) (Part 2).

In the next album, Mark Jansen meant to further explore complex interactions between classical instruments, choruses in Latin and Death metal elements, while Sander Gommans and the others preferred a more direct and aggressive approach to music, retaining some elements that made the sound of the band recognizable, but expanding it in new and different directions. These musical differences led to Mark Jansen leaving the band, in what he felt as an actual dismissal. Upon his departure, Jansen quickly formed another band called Sahara Dust, which later developed into the Symphonic metal band Epica.

In a 2007 interview, Jansen described his departure from After Forever as coming as an unexpected shock to him at the time, with the news of his dismissal being delivered to him by fellow band members shortly before a band rehearsal. At the time of his dismissal, the band were preparing to participate in a series of major tours and concerts such as Pinkpop.

Mark Jansen's place was taken by Bas Maas, who had been the guitar technician for After Forever during the tours of 2001 and 2002. August and September 2002 were dedicated to a European tour, supporting Finnish act Nightwish and attending some rock festivals, which exposed the band to larger audiences and gained them even more favourable press. Further media exposure came from Floor Jansen's collaboration with Dutch multi-instrumentalist and composer Arjen Anthony Lucassen, for the recording of Star One's album Space Metal and the subsequent tour in late 2002.

Floor Jansen's activities, as well as the regular jobs and studies of the After Forever band members, reduced the band's live performances for the rest of 2002 and half of 2003. It was known that the band was working at a new album from the beginning of 2003, but their first release was the EP Exordium in October 2003, containing an instrumental track, three new songs and two covers. In Mark Jansen’s words "the EP Exordium was like an introduction to this new full length album and the subjects of the lyrics are already connected to the concept (...) meaning they are also dealing with modern, social problems".

In 2004, the concept album Invisible Circles was released. The album, that deals with childhood traumas and abuse, introduced Progressive metal elements to the music of After Forever and the use of a clean male voice. The album reached No. 24 in the Dutch Top 100 musical chart. In the same year, Lando van Gils also left the band and was replaced by Joost van den Broek, a keyboard player that Floor Jansen had met during her tour with Star One, another project by Arjen Lucassen.

In early September 2005, the band released their fourth album Remagine. The album was produced using pre-recorded drum tracks by André Borgman, who had to take a long leave of absence to cure his illness. The songs of the album are simpler and more straightforward than in the previous albums, preserving anyway the usual dual voice dynamic in the sound of the band.

On March 3, 2006 the band left the Transmission Records label, due to the scarce promotion that the label was providing to their albums. Following this departure, Transmission Records released the Mea Culpa compilation, with plenty of rarities and B-sides. By October the same year, After Forever had signed to the German label Nuclear Blast Records.

In late 2006 the band recorded what would be their final album, as well as their only album to be released through Nuclear Blast, the self-titled After Forever. It features guest appearances from  Annihilator guitarist Jeff Waters and Doro Pesch. Videos of the recording sessions were available for download on the band's website. The album was released on April 23, 2007.

In January 2008, After Forever announced on their website, that the band would be taking a break of at least a year, mainly to assess the health problems of vocalist and guitarist Sander Gommans, who had been absent during most of the tour supporting the album After Forever. In an interview with Ragnarök radio, Floor said the band would get together early 2009 to discuss After Forever's future.

On February 5, 2009, After Forever announced that they decided to call it quits. The long break, during 2008 and 2009, had made them realize that they did not feel the passion towards the band any longer.

As you might have noticed, After Forever experienced a lot in 2007.

A new deal with Nuclear Blast and The Entertainment Group, the release of a new album, gigs in Europe and the U.S.A./Canada, all thanks to your support.

Unfortunately, 2007 also had a negative side. Sander experienced the symtoms of a burn-out and had to stop playing with After Forever for a few months.

After Forever did a good job doing the scheduled gigs with mainly George (ex- Orphanage) as grunter, making possible the album could still be promoted.

After that, a European and an American/Canadian tour followed, with Sander this time, and his condition seemed to be ok.

Unfortunately, just recently, Sander fell victim to a seizure attack in an airplane, and after research that attack seemed to be stress related.

The doctors think this is a very serious matter, and they strongly advised him to not be involved with any After Forever activity for at least a year, to prevent a worse health situation.

Because Sander is one of the formers, songwriter and co manager of After Forever, an After Forever without him is no option.

The band has been able to solve his absence in 2007 live, but another year full of compromises would not be positive for the quality After Forever wants to offer.

After Forever is a band that wants to give 100% and that's just not possible now.

With pain in our hearts, we had to decide that After Forever has to take a break of at least a year and hope you will all repect that.

It's terrible not to be able to do all the great gigs and activities we were planning, but it's even worse for After Forever to do those things with a compromise.

We highly value everything the band has achieved, and we don't want to lose that.

We also realise we ask a lot of our fans since we know what our gigs and music means to them.

However, we will all still be active in the music scene. Because of this break everybody gets the chance to focus on projects.

On our site and myspace sites we'll keep you updated about those projects.

Not a very good start of the year, but thanks a lot for all your support and understanding, for now, for the future, but also for the past year.

We won't forget you and hope to meet you again if After Forever returns in full shape!!!

Floor, Sander, Bas, Joost, Luuk and Andre

After the split up of the band, Sander Gommans released the album System Overload in 2009 with his solo project HDK, followed by Serenades of the Netherworld in 2014. He also created Magic-O-Metal, a metal/comic project for children, and works as a high school art teacher.

Floor Jansen started a new band called ReVamp, which got signed by Nuclear Blast and released the albums ReVamp in 2010 and Wild Card in 2013. The band was on hold for a while after the release of ReVamp because of Floor Jansen's health problems and her subsequent recruitment as the new lead singer for Nightwish. Jansen's involvement with Nightwish ultimately caused ReVamp to call it quits.

Joost van den Broek collaborated with both Sander Gommans and Floor Jansen on their new musical projects, while also leading several symphonic/crossover projects, particularly the Christmas Metal Symphony shows in 2008 and 2009 and Stream of Passion's second album The Flame Within.

He has since focused mostly on composing and studio work, but sporadically performs live, mainly as a session member of Ayreon and The Gentle Storm, all three are musical projects of Arjen Lucassen.

Bas Maas joined the live band supporting German hard rock singer Doro Pesch in 2008.

Both André Borgman and Luuk van Gerven joined Robby Valentine's live band while After Forever was on hiatus. Borgman also joined Amanda Somerville's band Trillium in 2017, thereby reuniting with his former band mate Sander Gommans.

After 15 years since their disbandment, on October 23, 2024, the band announced that they will be performing two shows on October 4 and 5, (First there was one show, but it was sold out quickly, that's why a second date was added) 2025 in the 013 in Tilburg the Netherlands in celebration of the band's 25th anniversary.

(Tickets) Co-founding member Mark Jansen, as well as the remaining members of the last lineup from 2009 will return, with the exception of Floor and Joost, who were replaced by Greek singer Angel Wolf-Black and Dutch keyboardist Jeffrey Revet, respectively.

The line-up during these two shows are set to consist of Sander Gommans, Bas Maas, Luuk van Gerven, André Borgman, Mark Jansen, Jeffrey Revet and Angel Wolf-Black.

Ephemeral (1999) demo

Wings of Illusion (1999) demo

Prison of Desire (2000)

Decipher (2001)

Exordium (2003) ep

Invisible Circles (2004)

Remagine (2005)

After Forever (2007)

Luuk van Gerven (1996-2009 2024-present)

Mark Jansen – rhythm guitar, vocals, screams (1995-2002 2024-present)

Sander Gommans – lead guitar, vocals, screams (1995-2009 2024-present)

André Borgman – drums, percussion (2000-2009 2024-present)

Bas Maas – rhythm guitar, vocals (2002-2009 2024-present)

Jeffrey Revet keyboards (2024-present)

Angel Wolf-Black vocals (2024-present)

Sharon den Adel – guest vocals on song "Beyond Me" (Prison of Desire)

Melissa 't Hart – soprano on songs "Mea Culpa", "Leaden Legacy", "Follow in the Cry", "Silence From Afar" and "Yield to Temptation" (Prison of Desire)

Simone Simons – vocals on song "Beyond Me" (Live in Hardenberg December 26, 2007)

Irene Jansen – vocals on song "Who I Am" (Live in Tilburg December 23, 2007)

George Oosthoek – vocals on the 2007 tour, replacing Sander Gommans

Doro Pesch – vocals on song "Who I Am" (Release Party @ Tivoli April 17, 2007 Tilburg)

Mark Jansen – rhythm guitar and vocals on song "Beyond Me" (Live in Hardenberg December 26, 2007)

Arjen Anthony Lucassen – guitars on song "Who Wants to Live Forever" ("Emphasis/Who Wants to Live Forever")

Damian Wilson – vocals on song "Who Wants to Live Forever" ("Emphasis/Who Wants to Live Forever")

Jeff Waters – guitars on song "De-Energized" (After Forever)

Rannveig Sif Sigurdardottir – mezzo-soprano vocal (After Forever)

Amanda Somerville – alto vocal (Remagine, After Forever)

Yvonne Rooda – alto vocal (Prison of Desire)

Caspar De Jonge – tenor vocal (Prison of Desire)

Previn Moore – bass vocal (After Forever)

Hans Cassa – bass vocal (Prison of Desire)

Marko Hietala – guest vocals on single version of "Face Your Demons" (Mea Culpa)