Q+A InterviewsSymphonic Metal

INTERVIEW: Coen Janssen – Epica

Dutch symphonic metal heavyweights EPICA have been busy in the recording studio once again, with their EP Attack On Titan due to be released worldwide this month. It comes two years after their last studio album The Holographic Principle was released, and is the second EP the band have produced since then.We caught up with keyboardist and founding member Coen Janssen to discuss the new EP, the growth of the band and life on the road.

The new EP Attack On Titan is to be released worldwide in a couple of weeks – how much of a challenge was it basing an album around an anime?

Coen: The songs were already there as they’re covers; we were contacted by a Japanese production company, the record label behind this artist, REVO his name is, and he’s the one behind the title songs for Attack on Titan. Because the songs were already there it wasn’t really that hard to put ourselves into the anime. It made things easier for sure, especially when we’re not all huge anime fans. Our bass player Rob [van der Loo] is into comics and that kind of stuff, but not really a diehard fan of it. I consider myself somewhat of a fan right now because I had to watch the whole first season just to get to know the story, and dig into the world of Attack on Titan. I watched the live action movie, as I think they made two movies out of it, and it was kind of cool as we’re not used to this Japanese movie style, and it was totally different from other movies I saw so it was cool to learn about where it came from, especially from the series. It’s even become a manga series now which I haven’t read yet, but that maybe a little bit different still so it’s quite interesting!

For those who aren’t familiar with the anime, what’s the main story behind it?

Coen: Well the main story is that, I’m not sure whether it’s in the past or the future, but anyway humankind is dead something happened and there were Titans let loose on this world. Those are big man eating humanoids, and the remainders of the population have built three walls, circular walls around their village or turfs, and those are there to keep the Titans out. Then there’s a giant Titan who breaks the wall and all shit breaks loose, so it’s a dystopian story, but the cool thing I thought was awesome is that there are a lot of different layers underneath, which are really happening right now in today’s world. You have three walls, and the people that live inside the first wall are most protected which are the rich people, so you have this inequality in between the rich and the poor, and the poor are the ones that are eaten first so of course there’s a big issue. Then you have the humanity issue, because the Titans are humanoid but not really human, and to save humankind the people will have to become beasts as well – they have to slay all those Titans which is another cool subplot, and then of course the moral issues of all the conspiracies going on, like you have a church like faction in between those walls, and they control other people. It’s really interesting – it’s not only a simple cartoon but it took my interests on a lot of different scales! That’s what I didn’t expect, I was expecting a lot of action, and a lot of blood and gore and awesome fighting scenes, but it’s actually a pretty decent series, and of course they have the cliff-hanger with every episode so it’s really well thought through – and of course the music is very cool too!

Attack on Titan was released in Japan in December last year, what’s the reception been like since the release?

Coen: To be honest we’re not really that close in contact with the fans in Japan, we’ve been there only twice, so with Europe and America and South America we have a big connection through Facebook, Japan is a little bit different. From what we’ve heard, people are very happy and honoured that we did something from their culture, and we also went there to play one show to celebrate the release, and the people who were at the show really loved it. The reactions we got were really awesome, and that’s also one of the reasons why we want to release it worldwide, because we heard a lot of non-Japanese people like the series as well, and we like the EP so we thought ‘why not?’

And what are your aspirations when it goes worldwide?

Coen: We haven’t really got any aspirations or targets, for us it’s more of an in-between thing, we’re also not really going to tour for that EP to promote it as we’ve been touring for two full years now, maybe even four years if you don’t consider the recording sessions in between the last two albums, so we’re just going to let it be there. It’s more of a gift for our fans, it’s not our own music but it certainly has EPICA all over it, so if you like the anime and the songs there already and you like EPICA then you must like this EP as well. I just hope that the fans like it and they enjoy it, because we enjoyed creating it and the project, but we don’t have any thoughts about hitting the charts or whatever, that’s not the main reason for it, just fun for us and fun for the fans as well hopefully.

This is the second EP that EPICA has released since your last album The Holographic Principle, so it’s fair to say Attack on Titan is more of a one-off?

Coen: Well the first EP, The Solace System,is actually part of The Holographic Principle – we had those songs and we felt like those songs were way too good to name them bonus tracks. You bring out an iTunes bonus track, a Japanese bonus track, as well as other bonus tracks, and they kind of get lost in between everything that has been released in the world. We thought ‘let’s make it an EP’, we had six songs that are good, and unfortunately you can only put 75 minutes on an album so we couldn’t add them on, a double album was also a little bit too much, so we chose this option. You have to see that as a part of The Holographic Principle, and the Attack On Titan EP as something separate. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a one-off; I wouldn’t say no to another one of these projects, if they come back to us and say ‘we have another season and we want you to do the same thing’. It was really fun, and it’s also a good learning curve as a musician – you approach the production and the music differently that you would with your own stuff, so it was really interesting!

Looking back on the history of the band, EPICA have been around since 2002 and gone from strength to strength. Has it surpassed your expectations looking back at when you first started?

Coen: It’s been 16 years, so when we started the band I was young and I was still studying, I was living off of my parents still, and of course you dream big. You think ‘we’re going to conquer the world’, but you don’t really dare to believe that you will come this far as we have come. You always have dreams like ‘I’m going to be the best footballer in the world’, or ‘I’m going to be the biggest rockstar’, it’s more like a boy’s dream, and we’re living it so I’m really thankful and grateful that we got the opportunities, that we kept on believing and kept on working our asses off for 16 years, and it was totally worth the effort! You start out as an aspiring musician with big dreams and big hopes, and now we’re six bands members living off our music – what more do you want? It’s a dream come true basically! It has it’s downsides of course, and you learn to live with those, but that’s a good thing. If you are living through those downsides, you think ‘ah, but think many people would actually like to trade or have this job’, and then you are instantly happy again!

Symphonic metal has also increased in popularity worldwide, how do you feel the scene has changed over the years?

Coen: Well when we started 16 years ago, this was called gothic metal – not anymore, which I’m happy about. Maybe we’re one of the reasons we don’t call it that anymore because we didn’t like that term a lot. You had metal with a female singer and keyboards, and it was then gothic metal. I think it’s not really the scene that’s changed, but more like the music industry has changed a lot, mainly in the way people consume music. It has evolved in a lot of sub-genres, there a lot of bands I think that try to become the next WITHIN TEMPTATION or the next EVANESCENCE or whatever, and I’m proud of that we never tried that. We’ve got some popular songs and some more commercial songs, but we always kept the little trueness of metal we’ve got. I think the fans and the people that come to festivals, they appreciate that in our style. The sound always evolves, and I think the sub-genre evolves with the sound, so it’s really hard to tell, everything changes! I think it’s good that everything changes, I wouldn’t want to make another record that we did in the beginning because you’re younger, you’re unexperienced, and you try to be your best every time so you learn more. You have more money available to record better and to have more musicians or guest musicians on your album, so it’s a natural thing and I really do think change is good.

EPICA have got a number of festivals lined up including Wacken – first of all how is life on the road?

Coen: That’s one of those moments where I sometimes need to pinch myself! After 16 years, of course it kind of becomes a job, in the negative way; you have to do the same shit every day, but on the other hand it’s awesome shit that you have to do! It becomes the same, and that’s why we never play the same setlist twice – we always try to change up a few songs at least, just to keep it more interesting for ourselves and the fans. There are a lot of fans that travel with you and your tours, they see every show, and I would it’s boring that they see the same show every night, so we keep it interesting for ourselves and the fans. I’ve been in a lot of different countries and places, and I really like that because I think travelling and seeing different cultures makes you a better person, or at least makes you understand the world a little bit better. Living in a small town can have an effect on the way you see the world, and I think the world could need a little bit more tolerance, and travelling and seeing different people and cultures makes you more tolerant, which is a good thing for me. That’s a giant plus side, but then on the other side, you’re in a small bus, you miss your family and that sucks sometimes, but then again everyone wants to do it and we’re doing an awesome job, but like every job it has it’s downsides.

And what’s it like for you as a band playing such a huge festival like Wacken?

Coen: It was one of highest targets when we started; when you start a band you don’t think about Wacken, or you don’t think that you’ll ever play there, then you do a few festivals and you start to think ‘maybe one day we could play Wacken’, and of course it’s huge! It’s a big festival, really cool – we’ve played there twice now, and the second time we were the opening band on the main stage. It was 11 o’clock, and we were doing some form of line check, and there was nobody on the field as the doors weren’t open yet. It was all grass and beautiful, and we were really scared that nobody would turn up, then you go backstage and wait until you have to play, and we came back on stage and the whole field was fucking full of people, it was absolutely unbelievable how fast the field filled up! Then after an hour it was all mud and no grass left, and Wacken really is something else! It’s a huge gathering of metalheads and all partying and celebrations – it’s really fun!

With the EP out worldwide soon and you on tour over the summer, what else have EPICA got in store for the future?

Coen: Well in the near future, we have the summer festivals, then we just recorded a song with the Dutch orchestra – we won this contest where you could win a recording with the Metropolitan orchestra, that’s an award winning orchestra from Holland. They’re mainly doing jazz and they’ve recorded with ULRETHA FRANKLIN and STING, all the big ones in the world, so we were really happy to win a contest to record a song with them as well! We’re busy finalising that and it’ll appear somewhere later this year, and then after summer, I think we’ve been touring enough for The Holographic Principle, so we’ll probably take a little break and then start writing new stuff!

Attack on Titan is set for release on July 20th via Nuclear Blast Records.

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