Greece-based Rock Overdose recently had the chance to talk with REVAMP / NIGHTWISH touring vocalist Floor Jansen. The audio interview is available here, an excerpt from the transcript is available below:

RockOverdose: In what terms were the new guests chosen for the new album, Wild Card? Is it true that it was you who wrote DEVIN TOWNSEND’s parts on the album?

Floor Jansen: "Yes. About that song I can say that, when the instrumental parts to that song were done, I was thinking that this song would fit very well for Devin Townsend, I was hoping there will be a song fitting for him as a guest on the album but of course this needs to fit to the music. When the song came, I had some ideas, so I sent this song to him with my ideas, and one version without them, because as for myself, I don’t do too many guest appearances and I usually want to be involved in the writing. I guess his schedule was so busy that he didn’t actually had time to take a look at it. So I finished the parts and his lines and I sent him my ideas, and apparently he liked it, so we sang it the way I wrote it. He did alter a few things, here and there, we didn’t fully copied it, but that’s cool because Devin added his own creativity, and it really sounds like something typical for Devin Townsend, and that made me very happy and proud. The same goes for Mark Jansen too, thinking of Mark as a guest singer. I did all the writing and all the songs, but there were some parts here and there modified, which is normal if you want a guest singer who will do more than singing a few lines. The other guest are more like…well they are not like 'the guests' on the album. For the choir, we didn’t want to go with a standard approach, we wanted a little more creative approach, more than a classical choir. So in the studio we were working with Marcela Bovio and Johan van Stratum from STREAM OF PASSION, and Daniel de Jongh from TEXTURES. We hoped for songs that will fit and in the pre-production I did a lot of work with the harmonies and sometimes did some changes and sometimes we just copied that, we had the others sing the parts I did in the pre-production, and that worked pretty well, it came out pretty good."

Wild Card was recorded at SandLane Studio in Rijen, Netherlands with Joost van den Broek (ex-After Forever) and will feature guest choir parts by Marcela Bovio (STREAM OF PASSION) and Daniël de Jongh (TEXTURES). The CD features guest appearances from Mark Jansen (EPICA), Johan van Stratum (STREAM OF PASSION) and DEVIN TOWNSEND.

Wild Card tracklisting:

'The Anatomy Of A Nervous Breakdown: On The Sideline'

'The Anatomy Of A Nervous Breakdown: The Limbic System'

'Wild Card'

'Precibus'

'Nothing'

'The Anatomy Of A Nervous Breakdown: Neurasthenia'

'Distorted Lullabies'

'Amendatory'

'I Can Become'

'Misery's No Crime'

'Wolf And Dog'

'Sins' (bonus track)

Album trailer #1:

Album trailer #2:

Album trailer #3:

Album trailer #4:

About Wild Card, Jansen comments: "This album became the most aggressive album I've ever made and in the lyrics I tell a lot about my personal experiences of the last years. This resulted into some heavy stories and some openhearted 'screams' I needed out of my system. It matches the violence of the music in a great way, we wrote as a great team! But not one sentence or word can really cover the contents of this album. Its variety in all its ingredients makes it almost impossible. A wild card is an unpredictable and unforeseeable factor. You don't know what you're getting, or when. That's this album! It's 100% ReVamp and it's your wild card!"

A concept that's taken literally in the album artwork, as the power woman explains: "I am the queen of hearts on it, who is a wild card herself. You see a 'nice' and a 'nasty' queen. The nasty one has a cracked lip, cuts in her face and a bleeding heart in her hand. The other queen looks nice even though queens of hearts never truly are... Again, what is it you're going to get? In that respect it visualizes the music, from aggressive and nasty to melodic and pretty. This theme has been important to me personally throughout my career and also in this album I played with it to the max. I used my voice in so many different ways now! The music invited me to do this, I am super proud of the amazing guitar riffs, the versatile and groovy but mega tight drums and the keyboard sounds and arrangements that bring something new to the table. We hope you like our wild card!"

The band has announced two album release shows in September:

September

6 - Dordrecht, Netherlands - Bibelot
7 - Utrecht, Netherlands - Helling

As well, Revamp has just been added as special guests on KAMELOT's Silverthorn Over Europe 2013 Tour.

Tour dates:

November

3 - Cologne, Germany - Essigfabrik
6 - Tampere, Finland - Pakkahuone
7 - Helsinki, Finland - Nosturi
8 - Stockholm, Sweden - Klubben
9 - Oslo, Norway - Rockefeller
11 - Hamburg, Germany - Knust
12 - Bochum, Germany - Matrix
13 - Genk, Belgium - Rondpunt
15 - Tilburg, Netherlands - O13
16 - Lausanne, Switzerland - Les Docks
17 - Pratteln, Switzerland - Z7
18 - Frankfurt, Germany - Batschkapp
19 - Munich, Germany - Backstage Halle
21 - Trieste, Italy - Teatro Miela
22 - Bratislava, Slovakia - Majestic
23 - Zlin, Czech Republic - Winter Masters of Rock Festival

Additional information about the shows can be found on Facebook.

ReVamp lineup:

Floor Jansen - songwriter/singer

Arjan Rijnen - guitar

Jord Otto - guitar

Henk Vonk - bass

Ruben Wijga - keyboards

Matthias Landes - drums