Actually, it hasn’t been written from a long time ago it has been written along the way. Mark [Jansen, Epica founder, guitarist] started it on the first After Forever album. On the first Epica album we thought it would be a cool idea to continue this concept. On the latest album we wanted to close it on this one. With Sander doing death grunts it makes the circle go round since Mark and Sander started After Forever and now they end up grunting together on this final piece of the concept.

Every album we like to have a mini concept, a central theme. Like with The Phantom Agony, that had religion as well. On this last album it is actually divided into three parts where the second section is another mini suite as well. So yeah, it seems we have a central theme on every album.

Mark and I are reading this book about near death experiences. We haven’t written any words to anything just yet so maybe that will end up in a lyric somewhere, maybe not. We’ll see.

Well, the movie did happen but I think it would have been better if it didn’t. The movie was really crap. It was this Dutch movie Joyride. It was just so weird, we were supposed to make the soundtrack for them and they would do two or three video clips for us. We just traded you know? So they do the first two clips for us and when we look back on it now they just suck. They spent a week filming the first one and it just looks like crap. We were writing the soundtrack for them as the next video clips were being made. They did try to make a good clip the first couple of times but then they didn’t even try anymore after that. So, we have this whole soundtrack album but we didn’t want to give it to them. Never mind about the videos. At first we wanted to release it just as “The Joyride Soundtrack.” But since this stuff with the video and other stuff… For instance, we had the music recorded with some strings, a real string quartet, and it sounds really cool like on the album [The Score]. But for their soundtrack they just used the demo material with just synthesizers and stuff because they thought it sounded better. Pure amateurs. For all those reasons we thought it would be best to not release it as “The Joyride Soundtrack” and as an Epica album that contained songs that did end up in the movie and others that didn’t.

Right now it is just a special concert. It is part of this music festival in Hungary [the Miskolc International Opera Festival]. Last year, or the year before, they invited Therion to come play with an orchestra and this year it’s us. So it’s this one time event of us playing with their orchestra. We are really looking forward to it.

I think we are still a metal band who just loves classical music.

When Mark was still in After Forever Sander, the other guitarist, mainly did the grunts and Mark would do the screams and high pitched grunts. So he actually started out back in After Forever with these high screams. When starting Epica he taught himself to do the low ones so he would be able to do both. I’m not sure if there’s that more high pitched vocals on this album than on the other ones. I think the reason for the more high ones could be that the album is more aggressive so it calls for more aggressive vocals as well. It fits the songs better this way.

Everybody contributes to the songs. The one that does more than the others would be Mark. He definitely comes up with the most stuff. He just sits down, grabs a guitar, or sits behind his computer and writes music. Ideas come so natural to him. It’s so hard to tell how our songwriting process is. Usually, Mark will come up with an idea. A riff, a melody, and then more and more parts. Then I usually work on drum and guitar parts. Coen, he works on the choir arrangements, Yves and Mark work on the orchestral arrangements. Somehow we all have our own little piece in the writing process. It might not be coming up with an idea but working with it like Coen does with the choir arrangements. He isn’t featured as one of the “main songwriters” of Epica but his parts, making the choirs the way they are, is a huge role in Epica. Everybody has his own part in the writing process and I couldn’t think of missing one of these roles in that process because everybody contributes in their own way.

Fools Of Damnation. Yeah, Fools Of Damnation. That is probably one of our hardest songs to play live but it’s the coolest too. Once the chorus comes back in, there’s so many drum breaks that makes me just go, “Wow, this really kicks ass!” That’s definitely my favorite track to play live. Before this album, I always said it was Consign To Oblivion the title track of the second album. But with this new one there’s so many great tracks to play live like Menace Of Vanity or Obsessive Devotion that it is hard to single one out but Fools Of Damnation edges out past the rest.

When our previous drummer left after the our first US tour it wasn’t really a surprise to us. He wasn’t feeling comfortable with music anymore, we knew it, and we knew that he knew we knew it, so it was for better for us all when he left. At that point we were looking for a new drummer because we had to record the album and go on tour. We had a couple of auditions and some were ok. But there was nothing that made us jump up and go, “This has to be our new drummer!” None of them. Now we didn’t want to go into the studio with a drummer that wasn’t as good as our songs needed him to be. At that point we contacted Arien who I had already worked with on the Delain album in Holland. He also worked with Coen and Yves in Holland too. He told us that he would love to record the album and that would give us more time to find a permanent drummer. So we were like yeah we’ll just record the album with him and start auditions again. The auditions had some ok stuff but nothing that matched up to what Arien had done for us, let alone higher. This made it even more difficult to find a permanent drummer. We then asked him, “Ok can you help us out live until we find a new drummer?” He said as long as it didn’t conflict with his band God Dethroned. They already had some gigs lined up up on the same days that we did. We contacted another drummer which was Koen Herfst who also substituted for Andre in After Forever a few years ago, he’s also very good. For awhile we went back and forth, for this tour Arien played, and the next one Koen. At some point, I think it was during our last US tour, that Arien thought “Maybe I do want to join the band permanently.” We were very surprised because God Dethroned was his band, his priority. He told us that they weren’t doing that much gigging anymore so it would be pretty easy to combine the two. He joined and we were very happy. Unfortunately, not much later after he joined, God Dethroned was planning on doing a lot of gigging again and they decided it would be best if they got back their previous drummer. Arien is full time Epica now and the old drummer for God Dethroned is now the permanent drummer for God Dethroned and there are no conflicts anymore with scheduling. I think this is the best for all of us. We are very happy to have Arien. This happens so many times to me onstage. I’ll be hearing just this incredible playing and great drum breaks and man, I’m just so happy, he’s one of the best drummers around and a nice guy too. Good memory too. In the studio he would listen to a song one or two times and then absolutely nail it.

That’s a hard one to say. The first tour that we did in the US was when we were with our previous record company Transmission Records. At that point it wasn’t a very good idea to tour the US because our label wasn’t really doing a good job here. We just wanted to play here in the US and so we got this offer from Prog Power which we really wanted to play at as well. Around the same period we got this offer from Kamelot to tour with them and we thought, “Yeah, just go for it!” We’ve played here since two more times, last year and this run. We see a lot of people at the shows with Prog Power shirts that come up and tell us that they saw us two years ago at the festival. So it probably has done something good for us! I remember playing there, it was the first time in the US, never been here before, and the people were so enthusiastic. It was a very nice surprise for us.

To begin with, when our previous label went bankrupt, we were planning on going into the studio but they canceled the studio time because of their money problems. We really wanted to enter the studio so we ended up financing the recording ourselves. We were going to start looking for a new record company after but a lot of companies started contacting us. Our situation and that Transmission was going bankrupt spread really fast among the other record companies because it seemed like almost all of them got to us right away. “We really want to have you on our roster,” and all that same story stuff. We had a lot of offers, probably from every metal label there is. Actually, we didn’t get an offer from Nuclear Blast first. We contacted them and told them we were looking for a new label and asked if they were interested. At first they weren’t too enthusiastic at all, probably because they just signed After Forever. We were like, “Ok, we’ll keep in touch in case you change your minds.” Then we were negotiating with Century Media in a very far stage of the process. When that was going on and the record was almost finished with at least a few mixes, we sent what we had to Nuclear Blast. Maybe they’ll change their mind and also to just be polite. The contract with Century Media was basically finished and that’s when Nuclear Blast contacted us and said they’d heard the songs and to name what we wanted and they’d provide it for us. We gave them the contract with Century Media, told them that this is what we had now and if they could top it, be our guest. They called us up and said, “Yeah, yeah just come on over,” and gave us an offer we couldn’t refuse, it was too good to be true almost. So we signed to Nuclear Blast, one of the biggest labels around. Not that Century Media had a bad offer at all but this was just way better. The support that we get from Nuclear Blast is the support this band needs. With Transmission we were touring the US when the records weren’t even available here. If you don’t have the label and the band working together in a proper way then the whole process just doesn’t work at all. Everywhere we play the cd is available in the stores and as a band that’s what you need to know.

My favorite part is working on the songs, having an idea and trying to develop it into a full song. The whole creative process and trying to get the best sound out of yourself in the studio too. My least favorite part would be the business side. Like with Transmission Records, we got screwed out of so many thousands of Euros. For some reason everybody tried to make some money off of us. You have to be really careful in this world in not getting screwed over. That’s what you get when you have a normal day job. You go teach mathematics or something and play music. You don’t have a job where you have to think like that. I think it’s a shame that in this business there’s so many people that try to make money off your back.