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EPICA – part II (English version) Yves Huts, Coen Janssen

Rotterdam 2007.07.07.
Epica performs at Trailerpop without Mark Jansen (in Paris for a Promo tour) making a pretty good show thanks also to the special guest Jan-Chris de Koeijer (grunter and voice of Gorefest and former guest at the Paradiso for the DVD) and they play also four songs of the forthcoming album The Divine Conspiracy, out in Europe in September. We spoke with Yves Huts (bass) and with Coen Janssen (keyboards)

Hi guys, it is a pleasure to see you live again?

YH: I hope you enjoyed the concert

Yes, always great and also great Jan-Chris!! I saw you last time at Paard van Troje in Den Haag, September 2006: amazing show, everything perfect, you all happy and smiling; then few days after the first rumours about the bankrupt of Transmission with everything that we know that followed; did you know something or had you understood what was happening?

CJ: No, there were rumours but it was a kind of unexpected

YH: Well, we were making the editing of the DVD of Paradiso and there were troubles with the payments: the editor didn’t want to continue with his work because he didn’t get paid and in that moment it all started… but as days went by we expected more and more it was just a matter of time they were going to bankrupt because they wanted to postpone the DVD and after the tour in the USA we wanted to enter the recording studio and they said “No no, let’s do it next year” and we said “NO, we do it now”

Indeed I remember that in Den Haag you already played Never Enough: how was the composition of the album in that moment?

CJ: A lot of songs were already written but not ready to be recorded, we still had to work on it a lot

YH: Yes, the pre-production was in an advanced phase because we write in certain layers: how we write the song we send an mp3 to the rest of the band and then Ad is the guy who works out in detail the guitar parts; so that had still to be done, there were only rough guitar parts and there were not all the vocal lines yet but I think that in September the album was like 80% written

We can say that the skeleton of the album was ready; so it was absurd to record one year later…

CJ: Yes of course

When you had the piece of news that Transmission was bankrupt, have you ever thought, even for a brief moment, that Epica were finished?

YH: No!! not at all!! CLICK HERE FOR THE AUDIO CLIP

CJ: Actually you don’t need a record company to be alive

And had it something to do with the decision of Jeroen to leave the band?

YH: That had nothing to do with it; it was just that he didn’t liked completely… he’s more like a jazz drummer, he likes to be a freestyler and is not so much possible in our kind of music; and on top of that he wanted the next album to be softener and slower but the next album will be much faster and harder than ever

CJ: … and he quitted before we knew that Transmission would be bankrupt

imm

About the drummer: I checked on the site and till now there’s no name…

CJ: Yes, we haven’t found an official new drummer yet but because we are working with Koen (Herfst http://www.koenherfst.com n.d.a.) now; today it was his last show for now and then we’re gonna work with Arïen (van Weesenbeek http://www.arienvanweesenbeek.com n.d.a.), the guy who played the drums in the cd; he’s gonna play with us for a couple of months, he’s gonna be with us for the American tour and after that we’re gonna play again with Koen; so from now till January we’re fixed with the drummer for all our shows…

YH: … so we’re not really actively looking for a new drummer…

CJ: … because they both are great drummers

But one of the two is going to be the official one?

YH: No… we would like that but they both don’t want

CJ: They both would be very welcomed to be the next drummer but they are busy with their own bands and they want to have the main focus on that

When you get your contract signed with Nuclear Blast?

YH: ….ehm… well actually we still haven’t signed it yet… (Coen laughs)

CLICK HERE FOR THE AUDIO CLIP

Really?!!?

YH: ..well… in a contract there are a lot of standard stuff but the real thing you have to negotiate is the numbers, certain numbers and you can put all that stuff on just one paper and that was negotiated very fast… let me see: when did we go to Nuclear Blast?… me and Mark… I think somewhere in April

It was you to go or they called you?

YH: Yes, they invited us like “why don’t you come over for a day, we’ll show you around and then we can talk about the contract and stuff like that”; we went and when we came back the numbers were negotiated and then of course we took a lawyer to do the details we can’t think about… well it happened very fast: we were about to sign with Century Media but…

CJ: … they made us an offer we couldn’t refuse…

YH: yeah, when we went there we said like “no we want this change and that” and they answered “yeah, no problem, ok” so now we have a very good contract

Which kind of contract is it?

YH: It’s a licence deal: we give them the licence, the permission to use our music and commercially exploit it so they will distribute it, will promote it, they will do all marketing

So now the rights are owned by Epica…

YH: Yes

About rights… I know that the owner of Transmission sold the rights to his wife: how’s the situation now?

YH: Now in the name of his wife he is threatening us like we can’t sell t-shirt with the artwork of the old cds, we can’t use the logo, we can’t use the backing tracks live, he does everything in his power to arras us but he has no real advantage out of it, he just want to break Epica; and he doesn’t even do anything with the rights, he doesn’t exploit it, he doesn’t make money with that; he just sits on the rights, not doing anything and using that to arras us

imm

Have you tried something friendly or something legal?

CJ: Legally is a really difficult thing

YH: But the most important thing for us would be that our album were back in the stores.

Let’s talk about the new album…

YH: The new album is a concept, there are three main topic developed in the lyrics: the negative human psyche, religion and nature; it will be more than 75 minutes long; it will be more heavy, more groovy; we have recorded four guitar parts instead of two of the previous album and this time we took three days to record choirs instead of one infact I think there are choirs in every song except the ballad.

How many tracks have you recorded?

YH: There are 13 tracks in the album and we have two more ready: a ballad and a cover song

About the issue of the album: you’re going to make a long tour in the USA, so have tried to have it published before September?

YH: Well, after the previous USA tour, the booker started immediately to organize the next tour, this one so the release and the tour are not strictly connected; anyway originally we wanted to have it published for June but we had a lot of delays and the summer is not a good period, like July or August so we moved everything in September; we will be there and after few days the album will be released so we hope we can promote it
(after the interview it was decided to anticipate the release in USA before the start of the tour)

Well finally if you want to tell something to your Italian fans considering that in autumn you will come for a concert…

YH: Yes!! Milano again!

But this time in a different place, is bigger and nice…

CJ: …. But also the last one was nice!!

Yes, Transilvania is small but very good sound. What do you remember of that concert?

CJ: Well, a funny thing that I remember is that we didn’t have a private shower, but there was one for all the people; so we were on tour with this band called the Xystus and Macbeth played also and we had this shower with all the people like a soccer team… and it was also the first time I saw my bandmates naked

YH: and I remember that the bass player from Macbeth was also left handed like me and used exactly the same bass as mine

So finally here’s your message for you Italian fans

CLICK HERE FOR THE AUDIO CLIP