Invisible Circles is the third studio album by Dutch symphonic metal band After Forever. It was released on 25 March 2004, by the small Dutch label Transmission Records. It is After Forever's first full-length album since the dismissal of guitarist and composer Mark Jansen, whose musical tastes had strongly influenced the sound of their first work Prison of Desire (2000) and their successful second offering Decipher (2001).[1] In this work After Forever choose a new musical direction, mostly revolving around elements of progressive metal instead of the gothic and symphonic metal of previous albums. The creative process for Invisible Circles took more than a year and required the use of three recording studios in the Netherlands and Germany. A long tour to support the album brought the band to some of the most important European rock festivals and to Central and South America.
Invisible Circles is a concept album about the dynamics of quarrelsome families and psychological child abuse. The theme was inspired by guitarist Sander Gommans' work as an art teacher, in direct contact with dysfunctional families and teenage problems.[2] It is also a metal opera, with a storyline that follows the lives of an abused child and her parents since her conception to adulthood.[3] The album was received with mixed reviews, but entered the charts in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Background
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.[4] Their second album Decipher (2001) had received very positive reviews[5][6][7][8][9] and their name was well known in the underground scene of the Netherlands.[10] 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.[5][11] 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.[12] 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.[1][13] 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).[14] In the next album, Mark Jansen meant to further explore complex interactions between classical instruments, choruses in Latin and death metal elements,[15][16] while 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.[12] These musical differences led to Mark Jansen leaving the band, in what he felt as an actual dismissal.[15][17]
I think my story has a lot in common with the one of Morten Veland. I was also basically fired from the band.
He quickly formed another band called Sahara Dust, which later developed into the symphonic metal band Epica.[15] His 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,[18] which exposed the band to larger audiences and gained them even more favourable press.[19][20] 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.[21][22] 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,[23] but their first release was the EP Exordium in October 2003, containing an instrumental track, three new songs and two covers. In 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".[24]
The reviewers noticed some musical changes in the new work, but some of them suspended their judgement, waiting for a full album to express their opinions about the new course of After Forever.[25]
Concept and storyline
The concept of Invisible Circles was shaped by After Forever's singer and lyricist Floor Jansen, taking inspiration from Sander Gommans' job as an art teacher. His daily contact with children with social and family problems had given him the desire to make people aware of these problems by incorporating their stories into songs.[2] He had also realized that those children's problems often stemmed from the psychological traumas that their parents had experienced in their past.[2] Gommans described the title and the concept of the album in these terms: "Invisible Circles describes the paths of life that someone can follow. Life consists of several circles that you can follow; many times you will come back at the beginning of a circle, although you have tried to get out of that particular circle."[26]
The plot revolves around a dysfunctional family, comprising a father, a mother, their daughter and the father's mother. The story begins with two lovers, whose relationship is running dry. They decide to have a child, which the woman believes may save their relationship ("Between Love and Fire"). The birth of a baby girl destroys in the mother her hopes for a brilliant professional career and smothers her passion. On the other hand, the newborn child causes in the father a stiffening of his feelings and the refusal to compromise his career for a "spoilt brat" ("Sins of Idealism").[27] The girl, perceived in the family as an unwanted burden, tries to adapt to the psychological abuse she receives, but she is the object of frequent quarrels and grows sad and depressed ("Beautiful Emptiness"). She searches for quietness and strength in her inner fantasy world, and friendship and love on the internet, becoming ever more detached from the real world and eccentric in the eyes of her schoolmates and parents ("Eccentric", "Digital Deceit", "Through Square Eyes"). The line of pain that connects the child to her parents appears indestructible and the situation gets worse when the father thinks of leaving ("Blind Pain", "Two Sides"). The intervention of the girl's grandmother reveals that the father was himself a neglected child and a victim of his family ("Victim of Choices"). The father's anger is a reaction to his abuse as a child and this realization seems to soften the girl's pain, bringing her out of her defensive shell ("Reflections"). In conclusion, the grown-up daughter, now a mother herself, faces the same dilemmas of her parents and is bound to repeat her parents' mistakes, closing the invisible circle that endures from one generation to another ("Life's Vortex").[3]
Production
Sander Gommans started the composition of the basic melodies for Invisible Circles at the beginning of 2003 in his home studio in Reuver, working at the same time on new songs for the EP Exordium.[12] This part of the creative process had been shared with Mark Jansen for the previous albums[12] and it would be shared with keyboard player Joost van den Broek for the following ones. Gommans wrote the songs for the new album with the precise idea of pushing the music of the band closer to progressive metal, reducing the gothic atmospheres of the previous releases to a minimum and adopting as many different musical styles as he felt necessary to the convey the message of the songs.[2][12] Meanwhile, his fiancée Floor Jansen[28] was writing the lyrics and shaping the plot for the concept album.[12]
The band reunited at Excess Studios in Rotterdam in July 2003, a few weeks after recording Exordium,[23] to arrange the new songs and to record the instrumental tracks, under supervision of producer Hans Pieters and sound engineer Dennis Leidelmeijer.[27] Every member of the band contributed to the music, which is credited for the most part to all six musicians.[12] When the instrumental tracks were ready, the band moved in August 2003 to Gate Studio in Wolfsburg, Germany, where all solo vocal parts were arranged by the band, under supervision of American singer and producer Amanda Somerville.[27] She also contributed, along with Jay Lansford, the recited parts that connect the songs to each other and explain parts of the plot. The solo vocals of Jansen, Gommans and Bas Maas were recorded separately by producers Sascha Paeth and Michael "Miro" Rodenberg.[27] Female soprano vocals, grunts and clean male vocals represent in the songs different feelings and behaviours of the characters. The final stage of the recording process was executed at Arts Music Recording studio in Rhoon from 20 to 24 October 2003, under supervision of Peter Arts.[27] The orchestra and choir parts were arranged there by Cees' Kieboom, who also contributed some additional keyboards to smooth the transition between the different instrumental parts. The final mixing of all the parts was executed by Sascha Paeth at The Pathway Studio in Wolfsburg, Germany in November and December 2003, except the instrumental introduction "Childhood in Minor" mixed by Sander Gommans.[27] The album was mastered at Sound Factory by Peter van 't Riet for a release in early 2004.[27]
Invisible Circles was released by Transmission Records on 25 March 2004.[29] "Digital Deceit" was the only single issued from the album and released on 20 May 2004.[30] A high tech video clip was produced for the song by D'iMages, the same company that had done the video clip for the 2003 single "My Choice", extracted from Exordium. The video was aired on Dutch MTV and on local musical TV stations.[31]
Packaging
After Forever in 2003, wearing the black and blue costumes and with Lando van Gils still a member of the band
The artwork for the album was created by German designer Carsten Drescher and his graphics company Media Logistics.[32] Drescher was responsible for the After Forever logo and the cover concepts of every After Forever album and single since then. The girl he photographed is in fact his daughter Aimee Drescher, who also appeared in the video clip for the song "Digital Diceit". He inserted the photos in a dark urban landscape tinted blue, completing the front cover artwork with the digital overlay of circles in the water to evoke the title of the album. The same circles were extensively used in the CD booklet[27] and in every other artwork related to the album. Together with the dominant blue colour the circles were also present in the live show scenography.
The photos of the band were taken by Dutch photographer Angelique van Woerkom in November 2003 and each member dressed in a tight black and blue suit with a lightning motif, the same colors of the CD sleeve.[27] The same suits were used for the video clip of the single "Digital Deceit"[31] and sometimes appeared in live shows during the following tour.
On 11 November 2016, Invisible Circles was re-released on streaming, containing a remastered version of the album along with single edits, previously unreleased studio sessions and an interview. Physically, this edition was released on 2 December as a three-disc set and included a similarly expanded edition of Exordium on disc three.
Tour
The Invisible Circles tour started in February 2004, just before the album release, in Mexico,[26] home of the independent label Raw Metal Records, which distributed After Forever albums for all the American continent. An intensive European tour followed, touching the Netherlands, Germany and France.
Two months after the release of the album, keyboard player Lando van Gils left the band on amicable terms. He played his last gig with the band at The Bosuil, Weert, on 14 May 2004.[26] He was replaced by keyboard player Joost van der Broek, coming from the Dutch progressive rock band Sun Caged, who completed the rest of the tour. Van den Broek had played with Floor Jansen during the Star One tour of 2002, where he also met Gommans. The tour brought the band to play at the important Graspop,[33]Pinkpop[34] and Dynamo[35] festivals in Belgium and the Netherlands. The Pinkpop Festival performance on 30 May 2004, was televised for a Dutch TV station.[36] The first leg of the tour culminated with the performance at the Wacken Open Air festival, on 7 August 2004.[37][38]
New dates of the tour were added at the end of the year, but some shows were cancelled when drummer André Borgman was admitted to a hospital and diagnosed with lung cancer at an initial stage.[39] The official site of the band reported the news of Borgman’s illness and confirmed some shows, with Ayreon, Star One and Gorefest drummer Ed Warby standing-in for Borgman.[39] The band spent the first half of 2005 concentrating on the material for the new album Remagine, while Borgman received intensive treatment to cure his cancer. Luckily, the cures were successful[40] and Borgman was back behind his drum kit for the final leg of the Invisible Circles tour in South America in August 2005.
After the almost unanimous praise received by the album Decipher[5][6][9] and the perplexities raised by the new musical direction of the EP Exordium,[25] there were great expectations for the new album by fans and specialized press alike.[25] The complexity of the music and concept of Invisible Circles produced mixed reviews, ranging from highest praise to complete failure, even in the same publication.[48] The bold move of making a concept album about such a controversial matter was generally appreciated but, as Eduardo Rivadavia said in his AllMusic review, this could be a "slightly overambitious creation".[41] The Maximum Metal reviewer states that "concept albums are always hard to pull off and not many bands can do it well" and "here is another failed attempt".[42] It was the general opinion of most reviewers that Floor Jansen's lead vocals are at her best and "her performance here is powerful, dramatic and very impressive overall, no matter how she chooses to sing".[48] However, her lyrics were sometimes considered a weak point of the album, despite the fact that the band "placed as much emphasis" on them "as they did on the music".[41] Sam Grant of Sonic Cathedral Webzine considered them "trite" and "disappointing".[49] In particular, the spoken dialogue by Somerville and Lansford was generally considered badly acted and detrimental to the music which, on the contrary, was generally considered the strong point of the album.[3][42][43] The change of musical direction, with the introduction of progressive metal elements, and the many variations of style adopted in the songs were generally praised, to the point that a Metal Storm reviewer compares After Forever to "Symphony X with Floor Jansen on vocals".[45] Only a few reviewers remained nostalgic of the gothic and symphonic sound of Decipher[48] and denounced a "lack of direction" and "too much confusion"[43] in the music of the album.
The album sold enough in the Benelux to remain in the Dutch Mega Album Top 100 chart for eleven weeks and in the Belgian Ultratop 50 Albums chart for two.
It reached position No. 24 in the Netherlands[50] and position No. 74 in Belgium.[51] The single "Digital Deceit" reached position No. 41 in the Single Top 100 chart in the Netherlands.[52]
Track listing
All lyrics are written by Floor Jansen, except where noted; all music is composed by After Forever, except where noted
Nightwish is a Finnish symphonic metal band from Kitee. The band was formed in 1996 by lead songwriter and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen, guitarist Emppu Vuorinen, and former lead singer Tarja Turunen. The band soon picked up drummer Jukka Nevalainen, and then bassist Sami Vänskä after the release of their debut album, Angels Fall First (1997). In 2001, Vänskä was replaced by Marko Hietala, who also took over the male vocalist role previously filled by Holopainen or guest singers. Although Nightwish have been prominent in their home country since Angels Fall First, they did not achieve wider success until the release of the albums Oceanborn (1998), Wishmaster (2000) and Century Child (2002).
After Forever was a Dutch symphonic metal band with strong progressive metal influences. The band relied on the use of both soprano vocals and death growls.
Epica is a Dutch symphonic metal band, founded by guitarist and vocalist Mark Jansen after his departure from After Forever.
Floor Jansen is a Dutch singer and songwriter. She is the third and current lead vocalist of Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish.
Tuomas Lauri Johannes Holopainen is a Finnish musician, songwriter, and record producer, best known as the primary songwriter, keyboardist, and a co-founding member of symphonic metal band Nightwish. He has stated that his songwriting is influenced by harmonic film music.
Symphonic metal is a cross-generic style designation for the symphonic subsets of heavy metal music subgenres. It is used to denote any metal band that makes use of symphonic or orchestral elements. The style features the heavy drums and guitars of metal with different elements of orchestral classical music, such as symphonic instruments, choirs and sometimes a full orchestra, or just keyboard orchestration.
Simone Johanna Maria Simons is a Dutch singer. She is best known for being the lead singer of Dutch symphonic metal band Epica, which she joined at the age of seventeen, releasing eight studio albums and touring the world. In her singing career, she has also collaborated with bands such as Kamelot, Leaves' Eyes, Primal Fear, Ayreon, and Angra. She also has a side pursuit as a lifestyle blogger, via her website SmoonStyle.
The Phantom Agony is the debut studio album by Dutch symphonic metal band Epica. It was released in 2003 by the Dutch label Transmission Records. It is the first album recorded by guitarist Mark Jansen after his departure from the band After Forever. On this album, Jansen continues with the collection of songs that make up The Embrace That Smothers. The first three parts can be found on Prison of Desire (2000), After Forever's debut album, and the following three parts can be found on The Divine Conspiracy (2007), Epica's third album. These songs deal with the dangers of organized religion.
Remagine is the fourth studio album released by Dutch symphonic metal band After Forever. It was released on 8 September 2005 by Transmission Records and followed the 2004 concept album Invisible Circles. It was the band's first album with keyboardist Joost van den Broek, and their last released under Transmission Records.
Decipher is the second album by Dutch symphonic metal band After Forever, released on 27 December 2001. In this album, the band make use of live classical instruments and a complete choir to back up the soprano voice of lead singer Floor Jansen. Thrown in the mix are also a duet of soprano and tenor voices in "Imperfect Tenses" and the recording of the late Israeli PM Yizhak Rabin's voice during the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty signing ceremony in "Forlorn Hope". This is the last After Forever album with guitarist and founder Mark Jansen, who left the band soon after its release.
Markus Hubertus Johannes Jansen is a Dutch guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. A prominent figure in the symphonic metal subgenre, he is known for his work with the bands After Forever (1995–2002), Epica (2002–present), and MaYaN (2010–present).
Sander Gommans is a Dutch musician and songwriter. He founded the symphonic metal band Apocalypse with Mark Jansen in 1995, which later changed its name to After Forever. He played guitar and performed the vocal grunting parts in the band. He managed the band and was the main writer of After Forever's music.
Prison of Desire is the debut album by Dutch symphonic metal band After Forever. It was released on 21 April 2000 by Transmission Records. The album contains the first four installments of The Embrace That Smothers, a collection of songs by Mark Jansen which deals with the influence and distortion of religion in human society. This theme was carried over to the Epica albums The Phantom Agony and The Divine Conspiracy.
Exordium is an EP by Dutch symphonic metal band After Forever, released on 17 October 2003. Another version of this album was released in 2004, with a bonus DVD entitled Insights. "The Evil That Men Do" is a cover of the Iron Maiden song, while "One Day I'll Fly Away" is a metal version of a ballad originally sung by Randy Crawford. This is the band's first recording with guitarist Bas Maas, who replaced Mark Jansen. Exordium is the first After Forever album to enter the Dutch Top 100 chart, where it remained for two weeks, peaking at #56.
Amanda Somerville is an American singer-songwriter and vocal coach who resides in Wolfsburg, Germany. She is known primarily for her work with many European symphonic metal bands.
After Forever is the fifth and final studio album by Dutch symphonic metal band After Forever. It was released in the United States on 28 September 2007. The album reached No. 6 on the Dutch album charts.
The Divine Conspiracy is the third studio album by Dutch symphonic metal band Epica as well as their first concept album. It was released through Nuclear Blast in Japan on 22 August 2007, in the US on 28 August, in Europe on 7 September, and in the UK on 10 September. The concept that guides the songs is that God created many different religions for humanity to figure out and overcome them so as to discover that, in nature and essence, they were all in fact the same one. Aside from the concept of such a conspiracy, The Divine Conspiracy finalizes The Embrace That Smothers, which began in After Forever's Prison of Desire and continued in Epica's The Phantom Agony. In short, The Embrace That Smothers is a collection of 10 songs, which talks about the dangers of organized religion.
HDK is a musical project of Dutch guitarist Sander Gommans, best known as member, vocalist and one of the main composers of the now dissolved symphonic metal band After Forever.
ReVamp was a Dutch progressive metal band formed by singer Floor Jansen after her previous band After Forever disbanded in 2009.
Mayan is a Dutch symphonic death metal band founded by vocalist Mark Jansen, guitarist Frank Schiphorst, and keyboardist Jack Driessen. The band features many different vocalists in a mix of clean vocals, growled vocals, and screams, supported by an instrumentation combining both heavy metal and symphonic metal elements.
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