It’s that time where Epica begin a new cycle of symphonic dominance with the unleashing of a brand new album. It was their previous effort of ‘The Quantum Enigma‘ that solidified the bands status as one of the best in their genre, but the band want bigger, and they want better. ‘The Holographic Principle‘ might just be the opus to that statement, and we ask some questions about the driving force behind it.
An Epica experience from day one has been incredibly rich. There’s always so much that goes into an album. A lucrative array of ethnic instruments, progressive symphonics that are melded together pure metal, only with an expierience to be enhanced by lascivious storylines transposed through a ‘beauty and the beast’ vocal style. Every album has put more on offer, and a new Epica album always serves as an exciting time for the genre.
After listening to their new magnificent effort ‘The Holographic Principle‘, we had a few questions for the band, and vocalist Simone Simons and guitarist Mark Jansen were there to answer them for us.
Listen to the unedited interview or read the transcript below:
‘The Holographic Principle’ is out September 30th via Nuclear Blast Records.
So we have Mark and Simone from Epica with us today, thanks for speaking to us, really appreciate it!
So Mark, last time you spoke to us you teased us a bit saying that the new album was going to be something about the ‘hologram’, and so now we have the album title ‘The Holographic Principle’. Very cool name!
Mark: I didn’t lie! [laughs]
No you didn’t! It kept us wondering and now it’s been revealed! Our first question is – why ‘The Holographic Principle’? It’s a very interesting title…
M: It’s also a very fascinating theory…it assumes that the whole universe as we know it might be a hologram and it makes you go wild in thinking about it. At first you think ‘no that cannot be true’…but when you start reading about it and watch documentaries, you start believing in it.
It happened to me – I started thinking that it might be true…the world is a hologram! And if it’s so, this is just a layer of reality, and what is the higher reality?
It seems like all your albums have such rich backstories to them – you said you were watching documentaries on it…when you were watching did you stop and think ‘oh, this could be a really good concept for the album?’
M: Yea, it slowly happens. You watch it and you think it’s really interesting. Then you think ‘could it work also to write in on the album?’, and then you start trying and then it works, and then it starts evolving. We all got attracted by the idea and then we started writing on it, and then it just took off. It becomes unstoppable!
Simone: We’ve had recurring topics on the beginning of Epica until now – it’s very much connected to philosophy, time, science, things happening in society,politics, religion…philosophy, science and spirit are the three main cornerstones of what makes up the ideas of what we touch on.
Musically, every time Epica release an album my jaw drops a little bit more. I think it’s fair to say it hit the floor this time. It seems like every album is becoming more of a cinematic experience, is that something you’re intending to do?
M: We put a lot of effort into making songs that have a nice flow from beginning to end. This time more than ever we put people to the test – we made people listen to the album and they had to be brutally honest to us. What did you like? What didn’t you like?
So for the flow – people would say ‘this is a strong group of songs’, or ‘there in the middle there was a lot of tension’, so we left these songs out and put other songs instead until everyone said ‘this album has a really great flow’.
They also said we had way too many songs. I think we had like 18 songs written, and only 12 could make it to the album. We aimed for 18 album quality songs, we could really swap and experiment until we really had the right flow on the album.
Was it a difficult process to think what you guys could do better? It must be hard to look back at the last album and think of how you could improve on it…
S: I guess it was seen to us as more of a challenge, as motivation – we changed up the team for the writing process. Everything was worked out into detail over the eyes and ears of Joost van den Broek, our producer, and what we thought we could do differently with this record is work with more live instruments. The budget was there, the expertise was there, and Joost knows some really great musicians that are used to working with click track as well.
That was one of the main things for album – to have a real orchestra perform all the melodies in a song instead of using samples. It’s become more organic and we’re very pleased!
Was it tougher to work with a live orchestra when recording the album?
M: Well it’s tough in a way as it was very time consuming. You need a good budget to realise that dream…
S: …and to write out the scores and everything…
M: …and you cannot let them record at the same time, everything has to be as good as possible, and we would not be able to hear if everyone plays the correct notes. Also if everyone played together you know you would get that…I don’t know what it’s called in English!
S: You know for example when you have the flutes…you will hear the violin in the background and you can’t edit it out because the microphones are above the orchestra.
M: You’d get every instrument in every microphone!
S: Yea, trumpets, trombones…they are very loud!
M: You have to record in small sections.
Wow, it must get a little complicated when you have to piece everything together in the end…
S: That’s why we have the producer, because I couldn’t do that!
[laughs] Sure…
M: Writing all these scores…it’s a lot of people!
It’s absolutely amazing. The whole process is mind-boggling sometimes. So with all these complexities, how do you set your mind to the task of creating a new album?
M: Well like we said the live instruments, but also we went more into detail with the rehearsals, and we didn’t stop rehearsing until everybody was completely happy. Like this you can really match the band side to the orchestral side, and sometimes even solos are backed up by a violin. That was something we’ve never done before, to go so much into detail and make it fit like a puzzle.
We didn’t have a specific goal of making an album better than ‘The Quantum Enigma’, at least consciously. We don’t tell each other that we want to make it better. It’s not a goal, or it would bring too much pressure to us. We all want to make the best possible album, and if it happens to be when you look back in 10 years, better than ‘The Quantum Enigma’, then we know we did something good!
Well from my opinion it always seems to get a little bigger and better each album…
M: Well somewhere we need to reach that peak…maybe with this one! [laughs]
Well it could be even better on the next one, who knows!
M: I can’t even think about another one right now…
Well you have an album coming out, you can take a rest now! So when you do write the music, I’ve always felt like there’s a visual scene involved, is there a lot of visualisation of things in your music?
S: I guess everybody makes that journey within their mind in a different way when they listen to the music. I like to listen to the Epica CD’s when we are travelling like when we’re up in the air…that’s where your mind starts wondering.
I think one strength of our music is it is like a movie score sometimes. It’s like the music and the movie have been taken apart and it feels like the story of your life. It’s cheesy but true!
I’m sure that’s the way a lot of people listen to the albums. Could you ever consider making a visual accomplice to a whole album? Like a movie with your album?
S: Or the other way around? Like having a movie and then writing the score to it?
M: Well maybe in 20 years if people say that this album is an all-time classic, with this one or ‘The Quantum Enigma’, whichever album they pick, they will say that one is our highlight. Maybe we can do something if we still keep on growing and we are a bigger band and we have more possibilites. Maybe we can do a cinematic – some kind of new experience I think that now doesn’t even exist yet, we could create something completely new! Who knows!
The sky is the limit!
S: Fans are often really creative too – we see like dance recitals with ‘Consign to Oblivion’ and we’ve had people make like a photo expose based on an Epica song, where they try to visualise what the lyrics are about and what they feel when they listen to the music.
It’s the same for me, I get inspired by other movies, by dialogues, the score itself or the story behind it. Everyone is inspiring each other. New art flows out of another art form.
It must be really interesting at the end of the day to see what people come up with. Every album could perhaps be seen as a cycle of inspiration, you take from others and others take from you.
S: I really like to stimulate that too, we post artwork from fans on our Facebook, and when people get tattoos I always comment on Instagram if I like it, I always support creativity!
M: I always have to laugh when I read an interview about a band who says ‘I don’t wanna get influenced by anybody! So I don’t listen to other music!’. I have to laugh, if that guy didn’t listen to any other bands, he would have never been able to make music in the first place as he wouldn’t know what music was!
It would just be an album of silence! [laughs]
S: Mute metal.
That’s the new thing. Be prepared for it. So I guess it’s straight back on the road now?
M: Pretty much. First we’ve got the Epic Metal Fest in the Netherlands and in Brazil. After that we start touring the US, and then late this year…early next year we have the European tour.
You guys seem to be hitting more and more parts of the world with every tour? You’ve done Australia, New Zealand…how are these experiences to see these different parts of the world, did you ever think you’d be there?
S: Well you dream of it! Music takes you wherever it wants to go or wherever people want to hear it. We’ve been a very productive and touring band since the beginning, and we’ve been travelling to 56 different countries…every time we play a new one we’re like ‘yes we can add one to the list!’.
Like a map at home that you can cross off countries on?
S: Something like that, or we can keep track of all the shows we play on our phone and look back after all the years…
M: It’s getting harder to find new countries to play in though! This time we played New Zealand for the first time, and Denmark!
You’ve never played Denmark before that show?!
S: We’ve been to the airport many times! But had never set foot on the soil…
That seems so strange…Australia, New Zealand, and finally Denmark!
M: And now there are countries that we haven’t played yet that are on our wish list like Japan, Honduras…and there are good chances that it will finally happen!
Going back to that cinematic experience, have you ever thought of playing a whole album live?
M: Oh we’ve done that many times! When ‘The Phantom Agony’ existed for five years we played the whole album, when ‘Consign to Oblivion’ existed for five year we’ve played the whole album…so we do that sometimes! But now there has to be a very good reason to do a whole album again, like ‘The Phantom Agony’ worked quite well, but with ‘Consign to Oblivion’ we though it was a bit too slow. We probably won’t do that again, just pick the best songs from the album if there’s something to celebrate from it. But maybe…if everyone wants to hear ‘The Holographic Principle’ album after 20 years we could do it!
Just one more thing I remembered about the music on the album! It seems the band have recurring musical themes such as Arabian scales that appeared on ‘The Holographic Principle’…are these always intentional or something that just kind of happens?
S: Both really. We’ve had that also since ‘The Phantom Agony’. We like to include different musical influences besides just the Western world. We think it’s cool to not have a boundary of what you can include in your music, and a little surprise here and there keeps us fresh, keeps the fans fresh and the sound – I guess you are pointing to ‘Dancing in a Hurricane’ – that’s like half of Epica band members doing percussion and dancing…
M: And we had a sitar player in the studio!
That would have been cool to see…
S: I like the sitar. That’s one of the instruments that I really wanted to learn when I was younger.
Did you get to try the sitar when you were in the studio?
S: No I wasn’t there at the time sadly!
M: The funny thing about the sitar is that you cannot write melodies in every scale…you have to know that before you record! It was the first time when I was in After Forever, I wrote a great sitar part and the player came in and said, ‘I can’t play it like this!’, and I was like ‘Why?!’. I had to rewrite the whole part…
You live and learn I guess! Fantastic guys, the album is really great, and thank you so much for your time!
