Anthony : So, first, could you please sum up the main theme of the album ?
Simone Simons: The lyrics, you mean?
Anthony: The subject, the title, everything.
Simone: The title Design your Universe is the last song of the album, and the lyrics are written by Mark. Design your Universe is not a concept album – many people think that – but it does carry on the "New Age Dawns" parts which marked also Consign to Oblivion. Design your universe is about that everybody can create their own universe by living their dreams, by realizing them, using their talents. And everybody is basically connected with the universe, every atom is connected, we’re all connected, it’s very cosmic. Quantum Physics, near death experience, greed, freedom of speech… Those are its topics. My topics deal more about personal things. The song White Waters is about a tragic love story. Burn to Cinder is inspired by a movie – I’m a big movie freak – and "Interview with a Vampire" is one of my favorite movie and, finally, I got the chance to write about that. Unleashed, our single, which we are recording a video for, is about an old guy which is about to die but he’s not satisfied with what he has done in his life and he’s desiring to be unleashed, to have another chance in the afterlife. So there are a lot of topics, it’s very varied, and it’s a little bit for everybody.
Anthony: Gala', beside me, couldn’t listen to design your universe. What would you tell to people like him to talk them into listening to it?
Simone: Well… If people don’t like metal music anyway…
Anthony: I think he does like metal music. (laughs)
Simone: I’m a bad sales person! I’m not like an American who can, you know, sell milk to a cow...
Gala': But what could you say about the changes regarding the past albums?
Simone: Well, this album does sound like Epica, but also since its change of two members it’s more extreme. But there is more of Epica in it: more choir, more grand, more guitars, more drums, more variations in the vocals. It’s more epic, it’s loud! (Laughs) But we still have our balance, we still have catchy melodies, we have long songs with lots of different things in it, and I think of this album I like basically all songs except one or two which I don’t listen to that often. But my favorites are for example Unleashed which is our single, I think it’s very catchy, very powerful, melodies sticks to your mind. Martyr of the Free Word is very groovy, it has good melodies, and very hard parts. Kingdom of heaven is like a little journey within the music… My opinion is that it doesn’t get boring even if it lasts fifteen minutes long… Design your Universe is the title track, and what I like about it except that the start is very oriental, but I like the ending! Normally, Epica is always like a really huge big bang at the end, but the ending of Design your Universe goes slower and slower, I’m whispering and whispering, my voice disappears and the piano disappears. That’s what I like, actually about it because the album is so fearful, so full of everything that is slowly fading away and it totally shoot you off your chair.
Anthony: It’s great! And about that, could you tell us how are the music composed? About the orchestrations, the melodies… How is the whole band involved into the composition of the songs?
Simone: Mark writes the majority of the songs. And then you have Yves and Coen who also wrote some songs, Yves wrote Deconstruct, Coen wrote Tides of time and Burn to a Cinder. Mark still changes things within their songs as well but those are basically their songs. We all have our home studio, so Mark composed behind his home studio, then send us the demo tracks, and everybody else worked on it their own at home, we sended e-mails to each other. When the song were almost finished, Coen, Ariën and Mark were jaming together and working the same time behind the computer, not everybody individually. In january we entered the studio for the pre production with about sixteen or seventeen songs to make a selection of the songs which we liked. The orchestration of the songs is mostly done by us but there is Miro in the studio who's, in the end, rearranging the songs, but we had to give our opinions. If we liked, he replaced samples with real good samples. He has got a huge library full of instruments samples. That's basically how it is, we're not a band which is rehearsing every week end, and composing songs all together. It's impossible, some of us have jobs, we live all over Holland, Belgium, and Germany, so that's kind of difficult.
Gala': And how do you think that, in the end, you manage to have such a harmony within the tracks, even though you're not stuck together?
Simone: Well, like I said, Coen or Yves write songs, and Mark still changes little things within it. In this album, it's not like in "The Phantom Agony" with all similar feelings, this album has quite different songs compared to it. But we are in the same studio, We have Sacha Paeth, we have Amanda Sommerville, so those are the keys which keep it together in the end. But this album is pretty new also because Isaac wrote the guitar parts, and Isaac guitar parts are different from Ad's, more solos, and Ariën is more a metal drummer than the first drummer we had so that's also a thing which is... Kicking ass! (Laughs)
Anthony: I noticed, while listening to the album, and all the albums indeed, that Epica's music is quite complicated, more complicated than a lot of metal bands. Could you tell us about your musical path, and the musical path of all the members of the band?
Simone: Our education and stuff, you wanna know?
Anthony: Yes!
Simone: Coen started playing the piano when he was eight, I think. He has studied the classical piano and also pop modern at the conservatory. Ariën studied at the conservatory... Mark has been playing the guitar - since when? Good question! - He had a couple of guitar lessons but he basically taught himself. Mark plays the guitar and also the keyboard, 'cause he's composing, Some songs with the guitar, and some with the piano. Isaac has been also studying guitar, he's a guitar teacher now. Ariën is also drum teacher. Coen is also music teacher. And we have Yves which is originally keyboarder, he also had classical piano lessons, and he's originally more a guitarist than a bass player, but when Epica offered the position for bass player he applied and started practicing the bass again. Myself, I have had transverse flute lessons when I was eleven, for two years, and one year of recorder. I took pop sing lesson for a year, when I was fourteen, and from my sixteenth to my twenty-first, I had classical singing lessons, I have sang in a choir. I've sang in a musical. That's a little bit of the musical background we have. Half of the band has actually studied music and is now teaching music as well.
Anthony: It's impressing! I must say that one of the thing that really impressed me in the last album was your voice. The way it changed, indeed. It has radically changed since the last album! Why do you, sometimes, leave the operatic voice of yours? Do you think you're tending to find your true vocal way of expression?
Simone: The classical singing was how I started and I truly still love it. But I think it shouldn't be used all the time and doesn't always fit to all the songs. Last year in the musical I had special vocal lessons with one of the greatest dutch vocal teacher and I really liked working with her and I immediately notices a change within my voice and that I could do much more different things than I thought I could do. So I told her “for the new album I would like to work with you on songs” and that's what I did. I think it's one of the big changes you can hear. I also don't sing the opera voice too much, I don't sing high all the time, I try to sing in my chest voice. That was a lot of fun, it's also nice to know that you can vary a lot with your vocals, to know that there is more and there so I'm going to keep on working, and trying to expend it as much as I can.
Anthony: It's wonderful. Great, really, I think so! Any duet planed? With other metal singers?
Simone: For now, not really, I've worked on the album of my boyfriend from Sounds of Seasons. I've sang some duet or some vocal lines, but for now it's Design your Universe. We will tour a lot, and in the meantime I want to record some songs on my own. If an interesting band offers me a job as a guest musician, then I would think about it, but I've done quite a lot in the past and I think now with Epica with the new album we got to really push it to the limit, to tour all over the world, show the new songs, live, gain more fans, and see how far we can go with Epica. And in the meantime, I do some other things 'cause I also like pop music, I like jazz and classical music, so I haven't made up my mind yet, which kind of album it's going to be and if I'm going to release it with a record company or just do it my own and sell it my own. We'll see! Many things are still to do!
Anthony: Tell us, how do you feel about Ad's departure.
Simone: Ad... yes. Last tour we did, with Amberian Dawn, Ad was acting a little bit strange. He was going to bed early and staying to bed really long, and he was a little bit sad. We thought something was going on. Then he send us a long e mail in which he explained that it was impossible for him to have joy in the band anymore because besides Epica he has a job to pay the bills, and one of the things he loved about Epica was composing songs and because of that job, he couldn't compose songs. So it was a little bit a shitty situation for him. He really loved "The Divine Conspiracy" I thought. He couldn't have time to write on the new album and that was one of the things he loved. So he decided to say goodbye after seven years, and of course, it's not just saying goodbye to colleagues, we came a little bit like a family after all those years touring around the world, and having such good years with him. But we knew that it was gonna happen someday, for he's also not a real life musician, he loves to work in studio, and that's what he's doing now. He's a math teacher, and he's also producing a new Spanish female fronted metal band. And he's totally happy with that, he's still happy with his decision. And we're happy having Isaac in the band, so it's all solved....
...I like your socks, by the way.
Anthony: Thank you! Lovely isn't it! (Everybody's laughing)
Pays-Bas