ReVamp - Wild Card

On May 10th of 2014 I went to metal show that include; Iced Earth, more on them later, Sabaton, whom I have talked about before with the tracks “White Death” and “Poltova,” and the first act of the night was a Dutch band called ReVamp.

It is the most natural thing in the world when going to concerts, there will be an opening act that you have never heard of before and suddenly you are going in blind (or deaf since we are talking about music) into a whole new experience. Sometimes you have to sit through a challenge of your patience, other times you get to discover something new and exciting. I have seen a lot of concerts, and as a consequence I have had to sit through a lot of disappointing first impressions, but I have also had the privilege of being introduced to a variety of great bands, but I feel my chance meeting with ReVamp was a highly positive one.

Standing in the front of the crowd, I saw a very tall woman with long black hair in a shinny dress and she led that metal band in an impressive way. The Dutch are statistically the tallest people in the world, and this woman, Floor Jansen, standing at 6’1 was an impressive sight. Being a tall, decent looking woman, and possessing a powerful operatic singing voice she kind of out shined the rest of her band ReVamp, even though I had to note the lead guitarist was very good and the rest of the band was solid in every notable way. Still there was no way of getting around it, Floor was the attention piece of the band she was much more interesting than anyone else on stage.

If you watch ReVamp’s North American Tour videos I am in part 6 when they are in Calgary, you can see me at the two minute twenty-six second mark. So that’s kind of neat:

Part way through this opening act Floor announced that she was the newest lead singer for Nightwish, which really seemed like the sort of thing I should have already known, so I was learning all sorts of things that night. I was impressed enough that I bought ReVamp’s two albums at the show and chatted with the Floor and the guitarist Arjan Rijnen for a couple of minutes, and that was also kind of neat. All in all I considered the night a win.

There are many examples of metal bands fronted by a powerful operatic female lead singer and ReVamp in many ways is yet another example of this trend. There is of course the added flair that Floor is also part of the most successful female fronted metal band ever in Nightwish, but that is another conversation for another time (January). In my humble opinion there can never be too many metal bands fronted with trained opera and soprano singers so I welcome the inclusion of ReVamp into the wild world of metal music.

There have been two ReVamp albums to date, their self titled debut album and “Wildcard.” Rumours regarding a third album are ongoing but regardless the album of interest here and now is “Wildcard” and the song to discuss further is the self titled track of the same name.

Floor Jansen

The song “Wild Card” does not really start kicking ass until the chorus. There is a moment where all the sounds drop and a completely different reintroduction of the instruments comes forward and Floor’s voice takes us through the chorus and she really sings and it is really great. Upon additional listens I came to realize this song is built completely around Floor’s voice and it is really a rather light metal song. I guess this is yet another example of the value of the strong front person with strong vocals.

ReVamp has been on a hiatus since sometime this year, which, if I had to guess has something to do with Floor touring with Nightwish. The future is unclear for the Dutch metal band and it may prove too much for Floor to work with and tour with two separate bands. If this is the end of ReVamp we can take comfort in knowing we got two decent albums and in my opinion a very enjoyable track in “Wild Card.”

- King of Braves