Epica could easily have been written off as a ‘Joni-come-lately’ to the field of female-led Euro metal, but they quickly proved their worth with the top-notch The Phantom Agony in 2003.  Since then, these Dutch metallers have released a series of consistently strong albums full of neo-classical grandiosity and powerful metal riffing, crowned by the deathly vocals of founding member Mark Jansen and the angelic mezzo-soprano of the lovely Simone Simons.  With the newly unleashed Design Your Universe in stores, it was time to catch up with Simone and get the latest on the world of Epica.

Do you write any of the lyrics on this album?
Yeah, both me and Mark write half of the lyrics.

Let me ask you about a couple of the songs’ lyrics, starting with “Martyr of the Free World.”
“…of the Free Word”

Ah, “Martyr of the Free Word,” yes.  It’s early for me and I’m still a bit hazy…
(laughs)  That’s okay, a lot of people, when you read it fast, they read, “Martyr of the Free World,” but it’s about freedom of speech and how you can have on the one side of expressing your opinion and to not spread hate among each other on the other side.  It’s a topic that we value very much, at least freedom of speech.  We come from Holland so we live in kind of a liberal country, but still we’ve had some spokespersons which have been quite radical with expressing their opinion and they got murdered for it.

How about “Semblance of Liberty”?
That is also a lyric that is written by Mark and it’s about how society is...  it’s difficult to explain.  It’s a bit of a follow-up to the song “Resign to Surrender” and it’s mainly about greed and how we have built a system which has led to a higher standard of living but in the end results in more greed and more lies and it’s more about getting product which gives you the highest profit but in the end don’t have real quality.

You have been working with Sascha Paeth [producer] now for a while.  What does he bring to the table that has kept you working with him again and again?
He’s very handy when it comes to the pre-production.  The songs are basically finished but we still don’t know what to do with certain things and some vocal lines aren’t what we want them to be.  Song structure wise, he doesn’t do that much; he add an extra verse sometimes.  With the song “Unleashed,” we threw out the original chorus and took the chorus from another song and suddenly the song worked better.  He has a really good ear to make the songs perfect.  Together with Sascha and Amanda [Somerville, vocal coach], we are working on the songs, changing some vocal lines, little structure things.  Along with changing the vocal lines of course also comes changing the lyrics here and there.  When we’re in the studio, we record new demo songs and a couple of months later, the whole recording process starts.  Sascha has been involved from the beginning, when we were just a little band and still very young, very fresh, and he has grown with us through the years.  So it feels very… how do you say it…  I live in Germany and speak German and speak Dutch and now my English is deteriorating.  It feels very familiar, very safe to work with him.  The creative process if very intense and also very personal, you have to have that certain click, certain chemistry, and we have that with Sascha.  Besides that, he’s just such a funny guy to be around with, we just have so much fun.

I understand that you guys are somewhat perfectionists in the studio.  How do you balance that with keeping the energy of the songs?  How do you know when a song is “done”?
That’s difficult. (laughs)  Once you’ve recorded the song, it’s basically finished and you have to be happy with it and that’s why we do the pre-production, to have the last chance to change the songs wherever needed.  For us, a song might sound done but then Sascha listens to it and thinks, ‘No, we can still do some stuff here and there,’ and we find out the song could be even better than it was.  So, it’s very difficult to say, okay, the song is finished.  Certain songs you think, ‘Ah, this is how it should be,’ and some you will always think, ‘Eh.. I don’t know…’  Your musical taste and style as a musician also changes, but as long as you’re happy with it at that moment, it’s good and I can say for myself, with this album, I’m very content.

Do you ever mess around with any of the older songs when you play them live?
Well, I mess around a little with the vocal lines live and I have a chance to do it a little differently than I did it in the past.  Also, the track “The Phantom Agony,” the title track of the first album, we totally made it into a trance song.  On the chorus, we added a very nasty trance beat and some disco lights (laughs).  Yesterday, we had a show in Paris and we even had a break dancer in a pink sweatsuit on stage, so that was a lot of fun.  Stuff like that we do, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, we laugh about certain things.  When you play songs live, you add the live elements: you have breaks, you have the audience sing along, those things slowly evolve.  But to totally rearrange the songs, we don’t do.

Amanda Somerville took over the vocal duties on the last US tour when you got sick.  Was that a difficult decision for the band to make?
Yeah, it was but we didn’t know how long I would stay ill and we had to say a month in advance whether we would do the tour or not.  So we thought, okay, if I’m still sick two weeks before the tour, we have to have a plan B - we have to agree to have a plan B.  I was for sure thinking I would be better again, but then the doctor said two weeks before the tour, ‘No, you’re not,’ and Amanda was our first choice to replace me since she is part of the recording process, she sings in the choir, she does backing vocals, she records my vocals, she does lyrical editing so she is very familiar with our music and the fans know her voice is kind of similar to mine, the boys know her so she’s friends with everybody, so that was the best choice.  But it was very difficult for me.  On one hand, you’re sick, trying to get better and then in the back of your mind you know your band’s on tour with a different singer.  So I was trying to stay away from the Internet and just focus on getting better.  It was not a headline tour; it was a support tour to get Epica known within the States.  This year, we’re going to make it up - from the end of January to the beginning of March, we are going to do a big tour of the US.

Has being from The Netherlands afforded you any benefits or hindrances?
I don’t know.  We have some great Dutch metal bands and it’s very much alive in Holland.  Not only Holland but Dutch bands travel all around the world and are quite successful.  A lot of people ask us why is it that the Dutch have so many metal bands, also female-fronted metal bands, my explanation is because of the water (laughs) and that’s the only one I can think of.  You have The Gathering, of course, which was one of the very first bands and inspired other people.  Holland is very talented when it comes to musicians and very proud of that.

I know you are a big movie buff - would Epica ever consider doing a soundtrack?
We have, actually, but in the end it didn’t work as well as we wanted.  It was for a Dutch movie and that’s actually the album called The Score.  It was originally supposed to be a soundtrack for a movie but due to some miscommunication, Mark had been writing very long for the movie and in the end he found out that they cut out half of the stuff, which is just not cool.  But the music was there and we loved the music, so we decided to just release a soundtrack album apart from the movie and it was also quite successful, but that was already many years ago, three or four.

Would you be into giving it another shot in the future?
I would, yeah, I would definitely also love to sing on a score album, like a little bit like Braveheart or Gladiator stuff, that would be really cool.  Try something else; I’m always up for that.

I’m glad to see Mark’s death metal vocals are still present on the new album.  Is that an integral piece of the Epica sound that you plan to always keep?
That’s what the boys like. (laughs)  And I myself as well.  But besides Epica, I have done many other projects.  I like to vary things a little bit, not stick to one thing, to keep everything interesting and appreciate everything.

What’s in the immediate future for Epica?
Central America, South America.  In two weeks, we’re going to leave for Mexico, so lots of touring.  We have now a European tour behind us which was very successful.  In the end, we played two shows in Paris that was really amazing.  The album is out now, so promotion, lots of interviews, touring - that’s the plan until next autumn.  Gotta promote the album and what better way than to tour around the world and travel - it’s great.

[for the rest of this interview, read  issue #52 of Outburn Magazine in Jan. 2010]

http://www.epica.nl/