Tuesday 27 August 2013

ReVamp - Wild Card (CD Review)


01.The Anatomy Of A Nervous Breakdown: On The Sideline
02.The Anatomy Of A Nervous Breakdown: The Limbic System
03.Wild Card
04.Precibus
05.Nothing
06.The Anatomy Of A Nervous Breakdown: Neurasthenia
07.Distorted Lullabies
08.Amendatory
09.I Can Become
10.Misery's No Crime
11.Wolf and Dog

Floor Jansen (Vocals)
Arjan Rijnen (Guitar)
Jord Otto (Guitar)
Henk Vonk (Bass)
Ruben Wijga (keyboards)
Matthias Landes (Drums)

Guest Musicians:
Devin Townsend (Vocal on 'Neurasthenia)
Mark Jansen (Guitar)
Marcela Bovio (Vocals)
Johan van Stratum (Bass)
Daniel de Jongh (Vocals)


Singer Floor Jansen needs no further introduction after 12 years of loyal service with After Forever, when member Sander Gommans suffered a burnout in the beginning of 2008. Jansen posted on her website that while the band was put on hold, she was going to use the opportunity to start writing music with Jørn Viggo Lofstad for a new musical project.
In February 2009, After Forever ultimately decided to call it quits, and on June 16, 2009, Floor announced through her MySpace site that she had started a new metal band, which put her musical project with Jørn Viggo on hold. On October 17, of 2009, Jansen announced that the name of the band was going to be ReVamp.

The word revamp literally means: to renovate, redo or revise. For Floor it got the symbolic meaning that this band puts new energy into her career as a singer, a next step but at the same time a continuation of her dream. The word 'vamp' indicates, with a wink, 'woman'.

In the few years of REVAMP’s young existence the band endured many challenges and unexpected circumstances. Heavy winter storms with long periods of suffocating frost! Followed by sudden summer rains with wild streams of water that’s taking everything with it into unknown territory. A survival of the fittest! REVAMP came out stronger, more mature and with darker and more brutal music that tells the tale of this wild ride!

Singer Floor: “Never before in my career I faced a situation like the one we were in with this album. It was a huge challenge because of several reasons. My sickness caused a major break between the first album and tours plus the writing of the first ideas for the second album and the actual finalization of those songs and the album. And right at the moment we started to pick everything back up after I was sick I joined Nightwish (As replacement for Anette Olzon). Like a winter and a summer storm, they bring unexpected things, some nasty ones and some amazingly wonderful!"


So many female fronted symphonic metal bands, a very few ever live up to expectations, so it is a a nice change to hear something that is actually better than expected!

A fast and heavy start with 'On The Sideline' with a powerful vocal, but plenty of melody giving it a commercial edge as well.
Floor can hit the high notes without making you shudder and there is some evil male vocal lurking in the background.
This pace remains for the next few songs and then we come to 'Neurasthenia' an outstanding piece of music with guest vocals from Devin himself, and it sounds like Floor was pushing her vocals all the way to match his power, and together they pull off a faultless performance.

This is followed by the beautiful and melancholic, 'Distorted Lullabies' with just vocal and piano, though the distorted part later kicks in with some serious riffs!

The heavy returns on 'Amendatory' and 'I Can Become' the latter with a really neat keyboard swirl running throughout.

Then (and i had to check twice that i hadnt loaded up a Dimmu Borgir track by mistake) we come to 'Misery's No Crime' with a full on Black Metal vocal, only when Floor's voice comes in do i realise it is Revamp afterall, awesome track!

'Wolf And Dog' is a bass heavy song with classic stop start riffs and drums.

Rating 10/10

For Fans Of : Devin Townsend Project, Tristania, Within Temptation

No comments: