EPICA (Eng.)
– Hello, thanks for answering to our questions. What’s currently keeping EPICA busy? How are you guys feeling being near to release your new effort?
Mark: It’s always a great relief when a new album is totally finished. Finally the sleepless nights and periods full of pressure are over. Don’t get me wrong but that pressure we put on ourselves so we choose consciously for it. But once an album is done it feels like the start of a holiday. This new album was no different, maybe the only difference was that we always seek for perfection so more than ever before we were very motivated to create our best album. It’s what keeps us going, if we wouldn’t have the feeling anymore that we can create a better album than the one before it would be time to stop. Even though I think Design Your Universe is a hard to beat album we passionately gave it a try 🙂
– The feedback for «Design your Universe» was simple overwhelming. Did that affect you in any way when it came to create your upcoming album or regarding how to approach your sound?
Mark: The reactions were overwhelming idneed and it made us very happy. But it blew up the expectations for our new album as well haha. So everything has its good and bad sides 😉 But honestly it didn’t change much in the way we approached our new album. Like I said before we create the biggest pressure ourselves as we want to get the very best out of ourselves. Only at the point where we are 100% happy with the album we can finally rest and give the album to our fans. As we are still very happy with the Design Your Universe album and its style we didn’t see any reason for change. So style wise RftI is a logical follow up on DYU. But soundwise we have changed some things. The mix is a little more guitaroriented and the drumsound is a bit more dry which creates more room for the rest of the instruments. With the mastering we made sure that we wouldn’t master too loud. It’s a development of the last 15 years that bands master their albums louder and louder. The reason for this is that no band wants to sound less «fat» on a complilation cd, or i-pod in between of other bands. But it got out of hand if you ask me and many cd’s nowadays sound npt good at all because of this. The big disadvantage is the lack of dynamics as everything is limited untill the roof (so everything sounds as loud, it sounds impressive for one song but the ears get very tired soon as they ears love dynamics) and that the music start distorting. Why recording an album with the best possible equipment and ruin it afterwards during the mastering? So we tried to find a good balance for that.
– This new album will be «Requiem for the Indifferent»; what are your expectations with it?
Mark: I had expectations and was very nervous at the same time for the very first record of Epica: the Phantom Agony. Since then I feel secure about what we deliver. I have no expectations however… everything always turns out a bit different than you were expecting. So there’s no use in wasting too much time by creating expectations. Of course I hope that our fans will love the album as much as I do myself. Whatever happens after that, we’ll see 🙂 I try to live as much as possible in the now as dreaming about the future takes away the moments in the here and now. As we need to plann many things ahead, like tours, holidays, video recordings etc it’s already hard enough to take your moments to live in the now.
– And, on the other hand, what can people expect from it?
Mark: People can expect the same quality as they’re used to from Epica. It’s a logical follow up on DYU but with some new elements, like a keysolo a very atmospherical Clannad like intro for Delirium and the arabic influences are completely back.
– Starting to get a bit deeper into the upcoming effort, if you don’t mind I would like you to start telling us what dos the album’s title refer to.
Mark: This title refers to the end of an era. Mankind can no longer stick their head in the sand for the things that are happening around us. We are facing many challenges. There is an enormous tension between different religions and cultures, wars, natural disasters and a huge financial crisis, which is getting out of control. More than ever we will need each other to overcome these problems. As we are all connected; the universe, earth, nature, animals and human beings, this period in time will be the prelude to the end for those who still don’t want to, or simply won’t see it. A REQUIEM FOR THE INDIFFERENT but also a possibility for a new beginning with great new chances!
I developed a theory why the world looks like the way it does now. Money was once invented to make trading of goods easier. In the beginning it was a blessing, it worked really well and things became much easier. Coins were made of silver and gold. Later on coins and gold were separated, but governments needed to own the same amount of gold as the money was representing. After that money and gold were separated and money is in fact nothing but air nowadays.
But the theaory that I made is about how people get challenged to get as much as possible of this money. We have a free marked economy. On a free market the ideal thing is that everybody had freedom and ca start his own buisiness without giving all this income away. But it also opened the doors to excissive greediness. Some poeple wanted more and more. Their whole self esteem is build on the amount of money that they have. The owners of the biggest companies in the world are on these positions because they are the masters of the $$$. Most of these people (there are a fw exceptions) don’t care about you and me, they just care about themselves and their mission to collect money. They got these high positions in companies by lies, deceit, getting rid of competitors, corruption and being extremely cold.
The world is ruled by these kind of people. These are the «indifferent» where I’m talking about. Money rules even controlling governments. So governments are depending on the biggest companies. As long as this is the case we will live in a world were we are slowly destroying the planet and therefor ourselves. The only way to have this all changes is in my opinion a collapse of the money system. We don’t need to do anything for that, as money is the equivalent of air and sooner or later there’s no base for it anymore and it will collapse.
– And what does the cover artwork mean?
Mark: Stephan Heilemann who designed the cover got the lyrics and title of the album and started working, this was the result. I do not ask him what all specific things mean as I want to leave it open for interpretation. Everybody will create his or her own ideas about the cover and concept and that’s what I like. The same about my lyrics, some lyrics I don’t like to explain as I want people to get their own impressions about them. Just if my political lyrics are misinterpret I like to explain them into detail to avoid misunderstandings 😉
– Once more, you have produced the album with Sasha Paeth; what does he provide to the EPICA’s sound?
Mark: This man is very important for Epica and our carreer. He’s not only a great producer and personal friend but he also is the objective guy who judges out songs when we have worked for more than a year on them already. He can judge best after one listening what’s good and what needs some extra work. We also work together on the vocallines as he has a great ear for catchy lines.
– You have also repeated with artist Stephan Heilemann for the artwork. I personally think he has showed his own style with the band and he even has make your two last covers really recognizable. Why did you decide going back to him?
Mark: Once we are very happy with someone we keep on working with him. As long as we can motivate each other and get great results out of them. Stephan is an open minded artist and he’s a little bit crazy (in a good way) so that is what’s needed to create artwork what’s beyond the ordinary.
– You have announced an European tour (which includes two dates in Spain). Do you already know how many songs will you play off «Requiem for the Indifferent»?
Mark: No, I after our cd presentation in 013, Tilburg – the Netherlands we will decide what songs we will continue playing. At this moment it’s too early to say that as we don’t know yet what songs will work best live. Sancta Terra for example is one of those songs that we didn’t expect to play untill today but the song works live very well.
– With just 5 albums you have got a really high status into the Metal world. How does a band manage to get such recognition?
Mark: First of all it’s very important to stay true to your own style and musical taste. I have seen many great bands with high potentials going down as they made a switch into another direction as that music was very popular at a certain time. We never did that. We keep on making the usic that we love to make. Even though we like to experiment as well we can still play songs from the first album untill the last album, they fitt well together in the setlist. Besides that we always respected our fans a lot and wherever we can we organise signing sessions, photosessions and we communicate a lot with them on internet. The opinion of our fans is important to us as well, as long as the opinion is usefull (like what old songs do our fans like to hear during live shows, or what special elements do our fans like during a Epica show). There are also people who like to give very negative comments on forums. Every big band has to deal with that and so do we, we just don’t read them 🙂 And if I personally read one (sometimes it’s hard to avoid completely) I laugh about it. I know that we are doing very well and therefor it’s important to develop a big shield against people who don’t like it that you achieved something what they don’t have.
– And with those 5 albums you haven’t loose your essence but have been constantly refreshing yourself, evolving and adding new things to shape a bit more your own sound. Is there always room for innovation and evolution or could you say you have found yourself (musically) with this new piece?
Mark: There’s always room for innovation but it’s also good to consolidate sometimes, like we did with RftI. Since Isaac joined the band he injected us with an enormous boost of new energy and guitarriffs. On the new album he could contribute even more than on DYU (as he joined the band when beasically all songs were written but contributed to the guitarparts) This time he also wrote 2 songs. I am very happy with this guy as we both worked very hard on this album and we motivated each other.
– On the other hand; is it easy to focus your songwriting in sounding recognizable still renewing yourself?
Mark: We don’t think too much about it but just starting writing. Sascha is the objective guy who tells us when we go too far in our urge to experiment. We have thrown complete songs away as he didn’t get an Epica feeling with them. So Sascha is in a way next to me the consciousness of Epica. We both guard the sound. As we listen to different bands and also develop our own musical tastes it’s obvious that we try new elements in the Epica sound as well. Fortunately the Epica sound gives us a lot of freedom as so many styles are combined into one already.
– That’s all from my side, thanks again for your time. Now feel free to add some final words.
Mark: We look very much forward to the upcoming european tour and we hope that many people buy our album, even though it’s very easy to download it after a while it’s important for the artists that people keep on buying the actual product in order to be able to record a new Epica album in the future again 🙂 See you on the road!!!
