Mark Jansen: I’d like to do that but then they’ll get mad at me (laughing). RockOverdose: So you won’t give us an exclusive information. We don’t have the permission yet from Nuclear Blast to release the title of the album. Mark Jansen: Well, that’s still a secret.
RockOverdose: What about the songs titles? Or it’s too early about it? What about the title of the album? I hope you will be able to hear that in the sound, because all this effort will be helpful to make a good sound. Every sound has been tested and the best selection was made. For example, you spend the whole afternoon making the drum sound, and do the recording for it.
They are really focused on the little details about the sound, so we have quite a big pre-production, the biggest we had, with a lot of drum sound, a lot of guitar, that’s just only what we have done in two weeks, and this is something we had never done before. Mark Jansen: For the first time we went in another studio, because we recorded all the previous albums in the Gate Studio in Germany, with Sascha Paeth, but now we look for a new environment, so we came to the Sandlane Facilities in the Netherlands. RockOverdose: What about the first impressions of the sound of the new album? I always like the process of creation, it’s also time consuming, but in the end when it’s finished and you are quite happy with the result, that feeling is indescribable. Mark Jansen: Yes, definitely, it’d been a while and now we have written quite some songs for the new album, it’s great when you see them developing in the studio and record them. RockOverdose: I suppose you must be really happy about returning back to the studio with Epica. Mark Jansen: Thank you! Very busy but I’m doing fine, I’m in Italy and I’m having a little break from all the recording process of the Epica and Maya, and one week from now I will be back in studio for two weeks, with Epica, to record the new album.
RockOverdose: Mark, welcome to Rock Overdose! How are you these days? Here’s the transcript of the interview by Anna Maria Tranca: You can also listen to the audio interview at the Rock Overdose homepage. Epica exerted great effort to leave their mark upon the symphonic metal scene and this album is the best possible result.Rock Overdose through Zisis Petkanas recently held an interview with guitarist, Mark Jansen of Epica. Regardless, there is very little I can say about Retrospect that is not positive, as it does not lack anything a fan would expect from a release celebrating a ten year anniversary of music. While the aforementioned live release had a more separated setlist, Retrospect does a much better job at combining all the elements at the band's disposal, but by the end of the concert it also works to this album's detriment - although the production is solid and everything sounds well balanced out (unlike, let's say, Within Temptation's Black Symphony), by the end of the show Simone is very audibly tired, most obiously heard on her performance of "Storm the Sorrow" (which is a shame because it is a great song and definitely deserved to be higher up in the setlist), but she still delivers a great performance and it's perfectly understandable that after three hours of singing one gets a fatigued. The music itself should be very familiar to anyone who has ever considered themselves a fan of this band before, and if in some case you missed The Classical Conspiracy back in 2009, you should definitely give this a listen. That is what I call commitment to music, career and their fans. With a full-blown show consisting of their greatest achievements in music, accompanied by members of the Miskolc National Theatre as well as a chamber orchestra (and let's not forget the video aspect), there is plenty of enjoyable material here and it's very obvious the band went all out to make this experience as amazing as possible, which is really not something I can say for some of their peers (looking at you, Nightwish) - even going as far as performing a brand new song during the show. It's always nice when a band acknowledges a milestone and decides to do something extra special for fans this is the case with Epica's Retrospect, an amazing three hour journey of the ten years of evolution this band has gone through, considering their roots and similarities to After Forever in the very beginning.