Epica: Staring Into The Abyss

“It is pretty weird, we never didn’t tour right away after an album release!” For a band as hard-working as symphonic metal stalwarts EPICA, navigating a world ravaged by a pandemic has been something of a shock to the system. Catching up with us from his countryside home in southern Italy, guitarist Mark Jansen is affable as ever (“I’m very happy with where I live that I can breathe the fresh air and be surrounded by nature – otherwise I think I would get a bit crazy!”) and reflects on the band’s past, as well as their future.

In their near twenty year career, EPICA have made a name for themselves with their bombastic sound and relentless work ethic. After they played their thousandth show in 2018 touring in support of previous album The Holographic Principle, they opted to take a sabbatical. That’s not to say they stopped working – they completed work on a band biography, Essence of EPICA after all – but the band haven’t worked on new music since 2016.

They did soon get that itch though, and work began in earnest on their eighth offering, Omega, perhaps an accidentally fitting title given what seems very much like the end of life as we’ve known it back in 2020. “When you release an album in this period, you have to make the best out of it, that’s literally what we’re doing and I don’t see it so pessimistic,” Mark is pensive when we ask how he feels about releasing Omega at this point. Though he’s not necessarily bothered about the lack of touring, he’s happy for anticipation to build before fans get to see them hitting the road with the monolithic new album. “Personally, I just take things the way it comes so if things are possible again, I’m more than ready to hit the stage again, I love doing it. It’s going to be different that’s for sure, but all the bands are in the same boat so for everybody it’s going to be different.”

He’s certainly not wrong, and the change in the music world has impacted the creation of albums as well, Omega amongst them, though the band were more fortunate than most. “Everything went smooth and the way it always goes. But at the very end, when only Simone and I had to record our vocals, that is when the lockdown started to happen and I couldn’t travel to the studio any more and neither could she. For me it was easy to find a solution as I had a new home studio set up so I was very lucky in this situation. Simone, she could record in a studio very close to where she lives and after the beginning struggles like finding the right microphone that took longer than usual because everything had to be organised from a distance by our producer.”

The band’s approach to writing this time around also saw change; but not for the obvious reasons. “Before, indeed we wanted to do bigger, bigger, bigger but at a certain point you reach the limit and you notice if we do more then we go too far and it’s simply not cool any more.” Not words you’d necessarily expect to hear from a band whose sound is truly bombastic. In their own words, “actually [with] the grandiosity of the sound, with [previous album] The Holographic Principle we reached the ceiling so we thought to take a step back, create more space in the mix and more dynamics.” While there isn’t a release of acoustic re-workings due any time soon – as even a cursory listen to Omega will most certainly attest – the band sought to understand what worked for them and what didn’t. “We listened to all the older albums and we tried to take the advantages and positive things of the albums,” Mark explains when discussing the writing process. This was certainly aided by the band managing to spend five days holed up together, writing in the same space, something they haven’t necessarily made time to do for a while. “Indeed because of the technology nowadays – and we still do take advantage of the technology by the internet and sending each other files, we still do that – but we started missing literally working together and being surrounded by each other. That’s a kind of vibe you can never recreate just by the internet.”

Acting as a culmination of a trilogy of releases, this focus on understanding what truly works for EPICA and what makes them unique immediately paid dividends. It’s perhaps the most complete, most EPICA album they’ve ever made and Mark is more than willing to credit this time spent surrounded by each other as a huge part of it, as well as setting something of a precedent for future work. “By doing so I truly believe we could lift the songs to the next level that we would not have been able to do if we kept working just by the internet. So I think it made a big difference and whenever we will make an album after this we will do it again and maybe even two sessions of five days,” he remarks on their time spent together.

That’s not to say it was a painless process, though. “We were very hard on ourselves, if one guy said ‘it’s not good enough’ we kept working on it until everybody was happy. That was the first time we went so far. It’s not always nice to hear ‘oh it’s still not good’ when you already worked for a long time on it, but if someone says it’s not good enough, there’s a reason for it!” The band’s love for and dedication to their craft is evident not only in their work ethic but also Mark’s response when we asked if there were points they weren’t satisfied but realised a song had gone as far as it could; “I think everybody is actually happy with the whole album. I haven’t heard from anyone who wants to change something, even after all these months. That’s also unique – usually there’s always something you want to change later on.”

It’s a bold statement given the admitted perfectionism – that the band are truly so happy with what they’ve created that even months down the line, they wouldn’t change a thing and “even when [he plays] it from the beginning ’til the end it still gives [him] goosebumps.” It must be a great feeling to look back and be so satisfied with the album – but Mark says half-jokingly, “the downside of it is I don’t feel at all like starting writing new music for the next album! I still really feel like, how on earth are we going to make something after this one? That’s the downside, I don’t feel like it yet!”

Omega is out now via Nuclear Blast Records. 

Like EPICA on Facebook.