Sander Gommans

Sander Gommans (born August 15, 1978) is a Dutch musician. He founded the symphonic metal band Apocalypse with Mark Jansen in 1995, which later changed its name to After Forever. He played guitar and did the grunting parts in the band. He managed the band and was the main writer of After Forever's music. After recording all guitars for the album Rise of the Warrior by Anna Phoebe, he has undertaken a project called HDK, which is signed to Season of Mist; HDK's debut album, System Overload, was released on February 23, 2009. He is also the additional lead guitarist on Kiske/Somerville, an album by the German singer, keyboard player and guitarist Michael Kiske (ex-Helloween) and the American singer-songwriter and vocal coach Amanda Somerville. In 2010 he co-wrote the album Scheepers, a solo album of Primal Fear's lead vocalist Ralf Scheepers. Resulting from his partnership with Amanda Somerville on HDK and Kiske/Somerville, Sander became one of the main members of Amanda's self heavy metal-oriented project called Trillium, which first album Alloy was released in fall 2011 by the record company Frontiers Records.Currently, he has released a new HDK album and he owns, together with longtime friend Paul Simons, a music company called "The Rock Station", which consists out of a music academy, a music studio, music management and music merchandise. On August 19, 2013, it was revealed that Gommans was engaged to be married to Amanda Somerville, and the pair were married in July 2014. On January 8, 2015, she announced that she and Sander Gommans are expecting their first child. In July 2015, their daughter, Lana Elise Gommans, was born. In 2018, their twin daughters Anya and Juliet were born.Between 2015 and 2019, Gommans joined forces with Scott Wenmakers (teacher and illustrator) and Menno Kappe (Graviton Music Services) to work on "Enter the Metal Realm", the first chapter of Magic-O-Metal, a heavy/power metal musical project for children. Through the website, people can (pre-)order various products concerning the project.