{"id":630178,"date":"2026-09-20T04:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T04:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/630178\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T04:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T04:38:09","slug":"symphonic-metal-vocalist-amanda-somerville-diagnosed-with-malignant-and-aggressive-brain-tumour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/630178\/","title":{"rendered":"Symphonic metal vocalist Amanda Somerville diagnosed with &#8220;malignant and aggressive brain tumour&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"elk-47d5bf08-b47d-11f1-9d3a-eb874ec94d09\"><a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.loudersound.com\/features\/the-25-best-symphonic-metal-albums\/3\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.loudersound.com\/features\/the-25-best-symphonic-metal-albums\/3\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-article-category=\"bands-artists\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.loudersound.com\/features\/the-25-best-symphonic-metal-albums\/3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Symphonic metal<\/a> star Amanda Somerville has been diagnosed with a &#8220;malignant and aggressive brain tumour&#8221; her family have revealed.<\/p>\n<p>Somerville is an American singer and vocal coach who made her name working with a string of metal bands including Epica, Avantasia, Kamelot, Trillium, After Forever and others.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"elk-seasonal\"\/><\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-47d5bf08-b47d-11f1-9d3a-eb874ec94d09-2\">Her husband, After Forever guitarist Sander Gommans, says in a statement posted to social media: &#8220;I have some very sad news to share.<\/p>\n<p>Latest Videos From Louder<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The love of my life, mother of my three daughters and my beautiful wife Amanda Somerville, has a malignant and aggressive brain tumour.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We\u2019re shocked, devastated and I can\u2019t describe the challenges we\u2019re facing as a family right now. We\u2019re very grateful with the help we\u2019re getting from family and friends.<\/p>\n<p>            You may like<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Positive thoughts help, prayers help, keeping us in your minds help. Please be there for Amanda and our kids and have us in your minds.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Amanda gives so much to all of us\u2026love, music, friendship, strength\u2026.it\u2019s time to send out hope and power to her.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"newsletter-form__strapline\">Sign up below to get the latest from Metal Hammer, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n<p>Somerville has carved out a name for herself with her powerful vocal abilities both as a guest singer and through fronting acts like Trillium and the Kiske\/Somerville project which she formed alongside Helloween&#8217;s Michael Kiske.<\/p>\n<p>She has also toured with the likes of Ian Gillan and Alice Cooper, while she has also stood in on lead vocals for Epica when Simone Simons took unwell.<\/p>\n<p>Somerville sang on Tobias Sammet&#8217;s metal opera Avantasia world tours from 2008 to 2016 and was the brains behind progressive metal project Aina which released the album Days of Rising Doom in 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Symphonic metal star Amanda Somerville has been diagnosed with a &#8220;malignant and aggressive brain tumour&#8221; her family have&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-630178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}