Tom Pluijmaekers

Tom Pluijmaekers — Dutch drummer — was part of Trillium, the project led by Amanda Somerville. His presence points to a concrete connection: Trillium was built with musicians from the Dutch and German symphonic metal circuit, the same one in which Somerville worked for years as a vocal coach and guest singer. Sander Gommans, co-founder of After Forever, is one of the writers of the project's songs — and the surrounding collaborators come largely from there. That kind of backstage is what sustains the genre in Europe. Bands like After Forever, Epica, Within Temptation and Nightwish share engineers, writers, producers and session players; an authorial project such as Trillium is assembled out of that network rather than from nothing. Pluijmaekers is part of it.