Interview - Mark Jansen of Epica speaks with Mark Derricutt - January 2021

By: Mark Derricutt

Like many, my love for symphonic metal can be traced back to the debut of Nightwish. Before that, however, Angra, Blind Guardian and After Forever had captivated my ears with their blending of orchestras, heavy melodies, and starting a dangerous hobby of peak sound stage in headphones.

Founding member Mark Jansen eventually left After Forever after seven years to form Epica, taking the sound and genre they established and building upon it over each subsequent release which kept them at the forefront of a scene now full of sound-a-like acts.2020 may have been a bleak year for most, but it was certainly not an idle year for Epica. This week sees the release of Omega, the bands eighth album and features twelve songs, including the epic thirteen minute conclusion to the “Kingdom of Heaven” trilogy, “The Antediluvian Universe”.

Mark Derricutt sat down with Mark Jansen earlier this year to discuss the album, the recording, and COVID-19.

Where to start, Epica, awesome band. I love your music. Ever since After Forever, going way back to the beginnings, I've just been a fan of the music. There was the whole online metal community where I came across people talking about After Forever and there's all the symphonies, the guitars, everything. It’s just like there’s so much going on. It's just like this is taking progressive rock and progressive metal into a different direction and bringing in, in air quotes, "real music".

"Real music". Yeah.

The whole kind of orchestras and everything, then when you left After Forever and formed Epica, it just kind of escalated that even further.

Yeah.

So where do we go? Where do we start? Well I guess for a start after the whole crap year that we've had last year, how are you?

I'm fine. Luckily I'm fine. My family is fine. So everybody's doing well. It’s of course kind of a tough situation for bands to be in at the moment, but it's the way it is, it’s something completely beyond our control. So the only thing we can do is sit and wait until things get better and that we can play shows again hopefully.

Yeah, next to that I'm happy that there is this album coming out, there's a lot of stuff to do so we don't have to be bored. Luckily there's this. On a personal level I'm not easily bored anyway because there's a lot of things in life that I'd like to do. All these other things that are still possible I'm doing, so I'm like cycling, running, swimming, playing with my dogs. There's many things that I love and I enjoy. So even in a lockdown I'm still having a good time fortunately. So nobody has to worry about me.

Right. So you guys are still in a lockdown kind of mode at the moment.

Yeah. It's very annoying. Hopefully it's all really needed, but there's a very strict lockdown again at the moment. I know you guys in New Zealand are having a normal life, so we see the images of you guys on the TV and we think like "we want that too”, but we don't get it.

I'd like to say it's all rosy over here, but there's still, yes, we've got shows but we don't have international shows. We've got music festivals and we've got like, people filling out festival stadiums and just partying. We recently had a local heavy metal festival as well, so that was fun. It was just a very low key kind of thing. But for metal, it was kind of big.

Yeah, that's amazing. It really shows New Zealand is already, nature wise, a paradise and very nice people. But now also it's literally the paradise on earth where everything is still normal.

I was actually going through my photos from the last show you did here, I guess that's the first show that you guys played here in 2016?

I don't know the precise.

I think it was March, 2016. Seeing you guys live was just taking things even further. Seeing the madness on stage and running around the bars with keyboards and doing solos all around the building, It was just Epic, and Epica being Epic. It was awesome.

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, because I flew already to New Zealand a couple of days before the show in order to see something of New Zealand itself, I did also do a bike ride there.The other guys, they arrived literally like the day before the show. So their inner clock was upside down. I don't know how they managed to play the show, but when you feel like it’s four o'clock in the night or when your body really feels like being asleep, then playing a show is always a funny, funny feeling.

I guess you've got the hype of the show and then after the show's done, that's when you kind of let it all wash over you and you just, collapse.

Actually, when the show is done you're still full of adrenaline. But that moment, like two hours before show, these usually are the most difficult, because then the soundtrack is done. You have eaten and then you have to wait before the show and then that waiting point is when people fall asleep.Then when you wake up, like after like one hour or something, it's like somebody has hit you with a hammer on the head and you have no idea where you are and then to hit the stage that can be sometimes a bit tough.

You guys walk out and it's like, you're calm, you're psyched, you're pumped. I guess you're pumped in a calm way, then it's just full on. What’s the actual emotion that you guys have going through your mind as you walk out on that stage, has that changed over the years?

No, that hasn't changed much. I must say whenever there is a crowd which is really into it, I’m always loving it to the fullest. That was in the beginning like this and still like that, so that has never changed. The only thing that changes that over the years is some stages became bigger and then you sometimes have a bigger distance between yourself and the crowd. Actually, even though that's what everybody is dreaming of, I’m always loving most of the shows that are a bit more intimate with the crowd closer to the stage, you have this direct interaction. It's a bit of a contradiction that the bigger you get, the more easy you can make a living off of music, so that's great, but on the other hand the stakes get bigger and the crowd gets further away. It has positive advantages and disadvantages,

Social distancing, enforced by fame.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. New Zealand was still a very nice intimate show. That was great. Yeah.

I guess from my perspective, the term intimate show is even smaller than that, compared to like a festival where you have got, say 60,000 people to a show with like 600 people, it doesn't really seem intimate, but yeah. when you are that close to each other…

At that show I think I was in the photo pit taking photos, so it was right beneath you guys and I was just like, ah, that's that feeling!, It was just, it was awesome.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, so people might think you get used to play crowds of 60,000, then it feels like a small crowd for 600, but for me it really doesn't feel at all like that. Like I said, sometimes I even prefer these small shows above the massive shows.It's amazing of course, when you play in front of such a big crowd and you put one fist in the air and 60,000 people put a fist in the air, it's a great feeling as well. But me personally, when you look deep in my heart, I prefer the small shows even above these huge ones.

Do the smaller shows actually kind of give you any sense of nervousness? like when you've got, let's say 60,000 people, you raise your fist. You see a sea of fists raise, you don't "see" them directly in the eyes, whereas in that intimate show, they could reach out their fist and probably touch you kind of thing. You've got that direct connection. Does that kind of thing play on your nerves at all, that they're seeing everything that you play? They're seeing everything that you do, that you may do wrong or not as it was on the album or…

That can sometimes happen situations where it's like the stage is so close to the crowd, then they’re in front of you, a guy standing with a Dream Theatre t-shirt and then you think, Oh, today I have to do that to be sure that I don't make any mistakes. So that happens yes. That can make you nervous that somebody is really standing there, like with a, with a Dream Theatre shirt, like looking at your fret board from the beginning to the end. That can be quite intimidating.

I can imagine the same as if they're just standing there, arms folded, just looking at you and just not enjoying it, but not looking like they enjoy it.

Yeah. It can be bad some times that, for example, you play and when you're not like the last band of the evening and they are clearly there for the last band of the evening, then sometimes some people, I don't know what they do with it. They can give you a very hard time, like the whole show looking angry at you.We always try to make them laugh and sometimes it works and then you’ve got them. But sometimes they keep on, and they spend the whole show being angry. It's actually a little bit funny why these people do that.

Yeah. That's the image, you’ve got to have the image.

I think. So it must be the image.

Talking about Omega, the new album that comes out, I believe February 26th. This is your eighth album. I understand this was one of the first times in a while that you've all kind of been in the same room for the writing process or the same...

That's correct.

Was that just through the nature of being together or was it actually a planned "we haven't done anything for a while. Let's actually get together and get back to our roots" or was that just how it happened?

We discussed upfront the things that we wanted to do and together with our producer Yost. He mentioned also that he wanted to have an even tighter way of working inside the band than the albums before.So we started out the same way as always like everybody collects ideas by themselves. We record them in our home studios and sometimes already working with like one other guy on a track. So we had already acquired some material, but then when we came together in that house and started working from morning till evening on each other's tracks, that’s where I think the magic happened, where the songs got lifted to a next level.We just booked like five days, because we thought not too short, not too long.

If for example, after three or four days, we are tired of each other, then if you have booked like 10 days, you're screwed.If you have to stop too short, then you feel like all we want to continue. So we thought five days was a safe thing to do, but after these five days, we still felt like we could have done more stuff so next time we're going to definitely do it again like this, because we are really happy working this way and might do two sessions of five days and see how that works, but for Omega it worked really well. We could really, like I said, lift each others songs to the next level.

I think the actual album itself shows that as well. There's a lot more I think, there's like a lot more chunky riffs just like going solid, but everything else is just all swirling around it. It just kind of like feels like taking things to a next level and listening to it with the full orchestra. I think you've got an orchestra and a choir, the children's choir and you were you were fortunate enough to record both of those, the orchestra and the choir before lockdown weren't you?

Yes. We were probably lucky with that because when we were recording the orchestra, that was when the pandemic hit. Yeah, some people got infected here and there, luckily nobody in Netherlands yet at that point, so we could travel.Then when we came back, we could finish the choirs and that literally on the last day of the choir recordings, the rules were made that you could not be in the same room from the next day on with too many people. So we were literally finished the right day and afterwards we could have not finished our choir recordings.So we added the two choir recordings, one with the adult choir and one with the children's choir and we were very fortunate that everything was recorded. Then the shit happened and then we were locked down and I couldn't travel to the studio anymore.

So I had to record my vocals in my own home studio.Luckily, also, we were fortunate with that. I had just bought new equipment and everything was up to date, editing, everything running. So it couldn't have come at a better time so to say, and Simone, she booked a studio close to where she lives in Germany and with our producer remotely by Skype being there, it worked like that too. It's not the same as being in the same room, but they could really work fine like this as well. So within the circumstances we took the best out of it.

That's awesome. I guess that the album itself is a testament to both your skills and the skills of the engineers, the right songwriting, and that whole process coming together. This is a solid, good album.

Yeah, really happy with it.

...and the conclusion to the Kingdom of Heaven, this epic 13 minute song, how do you write such things?

Yeah, this one I wrote together with Isaac and I had like an intro written for the song and I had no inspiration anymore for it. I had the intro and the opening riff, then I didn't know what to do. So I put it in a Dropbox where we share our ideas and Isaac said, can I try something? I said, yeah, sure, go ahead. From that moment on, we started really a ping ponging ideas to each other, and we wrote the song together until the very end. It was a very pleasant way of working with him.There was a lot of inspiration going on and another thing.

What happened is that during that we were working on the song, both of our grandmothers passed away. The same week. It was very weird. But, fortunately it was, they were at a good age, so we had them around for a long time and we could dedicate the song to both of our grand mothers. So it feels at least good to dedicate your favourite song to a person that was important to you. And yeah, this way it feels like, like a circle was, was full. It made the song even more personal to both of us.

That's quite heavy stuff there then - the lyrics throughout the whole album, kind of tie into that as well. The whole kind of, Omega, the Alpha and then that coming together of the end.

Yes.

So there are kind of ties into that...

Yeah. In a way. Yeah.That every aspect of life comes yeah. It gets inter-woven on the album. So also, the death part and especially in Kingdom of Heaven where you literally, can read about the process of dying, but without making it too scary, but just as a part of life. And that's also, I think, a good way of looking at it.It's unavoidable. We all have to deal with it, but if you can deal with it in the most positive way it always makes it easier. Instead of getting trapped in negative emotions and everything in life in general, anyway, you always have to try to not get trapped in negativity or sadness, because then it's a situation beyond your control and if you then punish yourself, so to say even more, or by staying in the sadness. Nope. You don't help the person that is gone with it, but you're neither helping yourself with it. So that’s the kind of themes you find also on the album.

That's cool. So I guess touring's out of the question currently. What's next in the Epica story currently, is it just more promo in the album itself coming out.

Yeah, first of all, we are working hard towards the release and that's always very intense. So at this point there's not much time for other things, but after that, then we have to see when things are possible again. If it takes too long for shows to happen then we will focus on the live stream .

I think you did a live stream concert a while ago for...

Yeah, we did once a live stream for the 10 years anniversary.

That was an awesome production but that was also a full live concert as well.

Yeah, at least it gives you the opportunity to still do something.Of course the live show with an audience is what we are born to do, that's the most fun thing to do. But as long as that's not possible you have to go to the second best thing on the list and that's would be a live stream.

Or you could just move to New Zealand and we'll just have local shows.

I heard some Dutch guys say they had already moved back to New Zealand because they had some work there in the past and they have a permanent residency saying that they can stay there. So they packed all this stuff and then they left.

So it's been great talking to you briefly and really looking forward to seeing this album get out there and get people to, to hear it and psyched to play it as well.

Thank you very much.

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