AFTER FOREVER guitarist Sander Gommans has issued the following comments as part of an ongoing discussion with the fans on the official After Forever forum:

"The craziest idea so far was the whole Invisible Circles album, I guess. It was an idea that contradicted everything we were supposed to do at that time.

After Decipher the following things happened in general: the gothic metal became extremely popular after WT's first hit. The style we accomplished with decipher became very popular, many other bands did the same thing. Record labels tried to release all kinds of commercial potential gothic metal songs, even some compilations were made. Gothic became hot, gothic cloths were 'in' for a while also for high school kids that only listened to top 40 music.

What we could have done was creating an album that was more in the vein of Decipher, create some extremely commercial songs, focus on the gothic clothes, Floor in a dress and give everybody what they expected.

What did we do? We did what WE felt like. We created a concept album with a VERY risky/actual subject. Not a single song was really commercial/suited for the radio. We had clothes that were opposite to gothic clothes (ok, I can laugh at them now:-)). Our artwork didn't have Floor on the cover, like a lot of oher bands. We tried to get our own place on the market, not continuing as a pure gothic band

I'm pretty sure (and believe me, I CAN be sure) that if we would have been distracted by what was happening in the music world and created the abum everybody expected with a commercial touch, this would have probably happened:

- we would have gotten really famous, because we have the best female fronted singer (my opinion)
- we would have gotten a lot of airplay
- I think I would have earned a lot of money

But what did we achieve by doing what we wanted? A far more versatile fanbase that is loyal and creative, a possibility to put a lot of styles in the future releases, because we created a different style with I.C., and last but not least, the fact I really got PROUD of what we did, which risk we took, and still survived! After I.C., I knew After Forever would always be a band that is real, not a fake hype band, and that means more to me than anything else."