EPICA Guitarist Says Singer's Solo-Album Plans Won't Affect Band

Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal of Metal Assault conducted an interview with guitarist/vocalist Mark Jansen of Dutch symphonic metallers EPICA on February 18, 2010 when the band played the House Of Blues in West Hollywood, California. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Assault: How's the tour going?

Mark: Above expectation! It is our fourth tour in the U.S. and the second headlining tour. So this was the tour that had to pay off finally. We invested a lot of energy, time and also money, to be honest, (laughs) in the U.S. and now it's a really great feeling when it is starting to pay off. First of all, the fans appreciate the latest album so much that every day people come to me and say that it is really great. That's a fabulous feeling and also that people show up in such big numbers. So I'm really happy.

Metal Assault: You have to tell us about the bus accident. What happened and where were you at that time?

Mark: We were on the Rocky Mountains in Canada and it was on a snowy road. I already didn't feel comfortable so I went to the driver and asked him how it is going. He said it's fine but I asked him if it wasn't slippery and the road was wide enough. But he said it is going to be OK. I went to bed but I couldn't sleep; I still felt uncomfortable. Then suddenly we heard braking and a huge crash near the back of the bus. Some people were rolling out of their bunks. Then we stopped and made sure that everybody was OK. We went outside to take a look and saw that the other car was completely damaged and we have been lucky that the driver could prevent a head-on collision because that would have been way worse. I don't even want to think about that. (laughs)

Metal Assault: How different was the whole process of writing and coming up with the music for "Design Your Universe" as compared to the previous effort, "The Divine Conspiracy"?

Mark: The biggest difference was that I wasn't working together with [guitarist] Ad Sluijter. He wasn't motivated to work on the new songs so I worked on them without him and later on he was obvious why he was not motivated because he left the band. But back then I didn't know he was going to leave so I wrote the songs myself and when later on Isaac [Delahaye] joined the band, in the last two months of the writing process he worked his ass off to develop the guitar lines. So that was the huge difference compared to "The Divine Conspiracy" and I think this resulted in more workout and more detailed guitar lines. I personally like it a lot and cannot wait to work on the next album. Our work has evolved, but it can be even more developed. So I look forward to the writing process of the next one.

Metal Assault: Simone [Simons, vocals] said in a recent interview that she would be working on a solo album. Does that affect EPICA at all?

Mark: No, because when we write new music, Simone always gets involved in the very last process of the vocal lines. The biggest amount of work is making the music and structures. Vocals are the last part so she does have a lot of time to do whatever she likes. Even I started a side project. It's different music, so there's no overlap between parts that I want to use for EPICA. So, the project I'm doing is way louder and heavier. I think, as long as I have time for it, it's no problem. Sometimes it is just nice and refreshing to work with other musicians and finding a new way of working and making new music. That keeps you fresh, because all the time if you work the same way it gets boring. And getting bored was killing me. So I was happy when Ariën van Weesenbeek joined the band. He brought new influences, so did Isaac. So that keeps the writing process refreshing. But now I also seek for some heavy stuff.

Metal Assault: What are your upcoming commitments in the studio and on tour?

Mark: We will continue writing new songs. We already started and I already have a whole lot of ideas. So we have to work them out and start developing new songs, because the new album has to be at least as good as "Design Your Universe", otherwise people are going to be really disappointed. So probably we're going to go in the studio in 2011 to record. 'Till then we'll keep promoting this album. There are still a lot of regions to go. We will go to South America, a new European tour with the summer festivals and some markets where we haven't been yet like China and Korea. We are headlining everywhere, finally! Sometimes you get a really bad treatment by headliners. That's also why we do it different. We give our support acts all the love we can, and all the possibilities. That's the way it should be and headliners should not treat the support bands like shit. People who buy tickets want to see three nice bands and not two bands who face all the difficulties from the headliner, to not be able to use any lights, not able to use the full sound capacity, not able to hang all their t-shirts. All these restrictions make me sick. So when we take support bands on tour with us, we give them the best possible treatment. I hope that one day when we tour with other bands, they do the same to us. It has to change somewhere. (laughs)

Read the entire interview at Metal Assault.

EPICA live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on February 10, 2010: