Floor Jansen

Floor Jansen is best known as the front lady of Nightwish, ReVamp and After Forever. She started in 1997 with After Forever, one of the first female fronted bands to make it big in a predominantly male scene. As one of the pioneers, Floor's name became well known giving her new band ReVamp a head start when After Forever retired in 2009. Thanks to her natural-born versatility both as a singer and an artist, along with her extensive studies in music and singing, Floor successfully sang and performed at many other occasions. She also collaborated with a variety of artists. An overview of the albums and singles that feature Floor can be found in the Discography section. She became the new singer of the Finnish metal band Nightwish in 2013, after touring with them since 2012. The long-awaited Nightwish album Endless Forms Most Beautiful was released in March 2015, prior to Floor embarking on their successful 2015-2016 world tour.

THE EARLY DAYS
Floor discovered her gift for making music after starring in a school musical at the age of 15. Being on stage and singing for so many people was such an amazing experience that Floor realized she wanted nothing else for her future. Her first songs were written in this period. After finishing highschool she started her studies at the Rock Academy in 1999. Simultaneously, her participation in After Forever was getting serious. She was in the band for two years now and, being only teenagers, the band recorded their first demo Ephemeral. It instantly got picked up by several record labels. Floor remained dedicated to her studies as the band released its first album Prison of Desire, in 2000. At the same time, being a big fan of Arjen Lucassen, Floor was honored to sing on The Universal Migrator from Ayreon. This meant the start of, as it would turn out to become, a long lasting and fruitful collaboration with this world-renowned musical genius!

AFTER FOREVER & STAR ONE
After Forever toured the country and Europe as Floor continued her studies. Not too long after their first, the band wrote and released their second album Decipher in 2001. And again Floor joined forces with Arjen Lucassen, now on his project 'Star One'. It's first album Space Metal got released in 2002, followed by a tour in 2003, to be seen on the DVD Live on Earth. Additionally, After Forever released a mini album that year called Exordium. With this mini album a new era began for the band after having said goodbye to their band member Mark Jansen (Epica, MaYaN). This mini album was the first album without him and a new direction was set.

THE ROAD AHEAD
For her final performance for her graduation from the Rock Academy in 2004, Floor gave a solo show and CD release-show for After Forever's fourth album Invisible Circles. She scored 9 out of 10 points for this special evening! This evening also ensured her study at the conservatory for 2 more years of studying musicals and opera part-time. Floor's weeks then were filled with performing, writing, singing, studying and teaching.

In 2005 the album Remagine got released. This album was the last one released by record label Transmission. After Forever signed a new deal with Nuclear Blast and released its fifth and last album in 2007, After Forever. The single Energize Me was very well received. The band widely promoted the album doing many shows, festivals and tours. Unfortunately, guitar player Sander Gommans got overcome by the pressure of their busy schedule. He suffered a severe burn-out. The band decided to take a sabbatical year in 2008. Floor used this time to start writing a rock album with Norwegian guitarist Jörn Viggo Lofstad (Pagan's Mind).

The project got the name 'Northward'. Additionally that year, Floor featured on yet another new Ayreon album called 0101100.

REVAMP
Even though After Forever terminated, Floor wanted to continue her career as metal singer. She started ReVamp. Floor wrote all the music for ReVamp in 2009, in collaboration with her old After Forever buddy, Joost van den Broek and Grip Inc guitarist, Waldemar Sorychta. They wrote and recorded the album and had Koen Herfst (I Chaos, Bagga Bownz, Armin van Buuren) to rock the drums. Then Floor audited new band members, and assembled a band to play live shows with. In 2010 the first album ReVamp got released, again labeled under Nuclear Blast. The band started out gigging by doing many successful club shows and festivals, and joined Epica on their European tour.

A burn-out made Floor stop working in 2011. She was out of business because of this for almost a year and a half. When she slowly recovered, Floor picked up her teaching and the writing of ReVamp's second album. Guitarist Jord Otto and keyboard player Ruben Wijga became the two writers in this young band. Joost van den Broek became the producer and co-writer, and together with Floor they wrote the album Wild Card which was released in August 2013. The process of the writing, recording and releasing of this album got delayed after a sudden phone call Floor received in the end of September 2012.

Other interesting projects presented themselves as well. Floor was invited to sing on MaYaN's first album, Quarterpast, in 2011; a project by former band member Mark Jansen (Epica, After Forever), and Jack Driessen (After Forever). Furthermore, she also had a small role on Devin Townsend's new work Deconstruction.

DO RE MI
Next to singing, writing and performing, Floor pursued a career as a teacher. Next to teaching vocals, she also taught performance classes, band coaching and modern music industry theory.

NIGHTWISH
This call of September 2012 led to Floor joining Nightwish on their Imaginaerum tour in the USA. She replaced singer Anette Olson on a very short notice. From this moment on Floor did the rest of their world tour, which ended in August 2013. The band made a documentary titled "Please Learn the Setlist in 48 Hours" about Floor's first few days in this special tour and the magic they created on stage together, which can be seen on the DVD from their live show at Wacken Open Air. The DVD and live album Showtime, Storytime was released in November 2013. The band announced the news that both Floor and uilleann pipe and flute player, Troy Donockley, would become permanent band members of Nightwish right before this release.

From this moment on Floor was singing in both Nightwish as ReVamp. She is the voice on the latest Nightwish album, Endless Forms Most Beautiful which was written and recorded in 2014. In the meantime she was touring with ReVamp. That same year, she also featured on the new MaYaN album, Antagonise and Epica's 10th Anniversary live CD/DVD, Retrospect.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful first single Élan, was released together with the first music video, on February 2015. The long awaited album was released at the end of March 2015, which led the way to their successful 2015-2016 world tour before their Decades: World Tour 2018 in North America where they featured a special setlist of rarely heard material from the early era, and revisited old songs with new twists. A 2CD compilation titled Decades was released March 9th, to go along with this special tour.

NORTHWARD
In 2017, the year of Nightwish's break, Floor took the opportunity to contact her old friend Jorn Viggo again, to see if he was still interested in resurrecting Northward and of course he was! Stepping free from all boundaries, Northward's sound is strong, euphoric and straight in the tradition of Skunk Anansie, Foo Fighters and Alter Bridge but also older bands such as Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, the music is coming straight to the point and makes no compromises. "The music is melodic, but also in your face and kick ass rock. Cool riffs, good melodies, tasteful arrangements. We would simply like to call it 'Good Music'. We wanted to explore a basic rock sound, with drums, bass, guitar and vocals. Not the heavy layers of keyboards, choirs etc." says Floor.

Alongside Floor Jansen and Jorn Viggo Lofstad, Morty Black (TNT) handled bass duties, while drums were handled by Jango Nilsen and Stian Kristoffersen (Pagan's Mind). You will also hear a guest appearance by Floor's sister Irene Jansen, singing a duet on the song 'Drifting Islands'. And finally, Ronny Tegner (Pagan's Mind) played the piano on one song.

In August 2018, the hard rock project finally unleashed their debut single While Love Died, alongside a video for the track. The single is a part of their upcoming debut album Northward to be released October, 19th."We are both very proud and happy to finally get to show you all what we have been up to. Here is our first single! We hope you will enjoy it", comments guitarist Jorn Viggo Lofstad. Watch the video here.

BESTE ZANGERS
In April 2019, Floor travelled to Ibiza to record the Dutch television show "Beste Zangers". This show is all about music and singing and despite the name, has nothing to do with whom is best. 7 Singers participate and sing each others music in their own style. This show aired from August until October on Dutch national television.

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