Mousekingdom Blog

Disney is my passion and there is not a lot that can take my thoughts away from this passion. But about 1 year ago I discovered EPICA, and although music has always played a big role in my life, it is the first time ever that I am so passionate about a group. After seeing them live for about 20 times I got to sit down with Mark Jansen (founder, guitars, grunts & screams) and the beautiful talented Simone Simons (Mezzo Soprano) and talked about those two passions.

Bare with us and see how much similarity there could be in what look like two different worlds as we talk about their music, including a concert in Disneyland Resort Paris, about Disney movies like “The Little Mermaid” and “A Nightmare Before Christmas”, about “The Lion King” and the composer Hans Zimmer and read how we compare Disney with Gothic to find out that both are all about fairy tales…

For the people who do not yet know EPICA, how would you define your music?
Mark; A combination of film music with metal, this is the description we would use although others would call it Gothic Metal…
Simone; Symphonic Metal, classic metal, everybody gives there on definition of it.
Mark; We however would call it film music with metal.

EPICA is a very young, new group, but already has enormous success. Is there an explanation of this success in such early stages?
Mark; First of all by working very hard for it and always try to get the best out of ourselves. By doing this, I think, it is possible to get the best albums out there that are possible at this time. Working hard has brought us far, and grabbing every chance bringing us a step further every time. This is what we’ve done the last couple of years.

Was it a difficult start?
Mark; Yes, in the beginning we made the wrong start with Helena Michaelsen as the singer. It didn’t click with her and the band, but since we are working with Simone it has gone very fast.

In the beginning of EPICA you got to do a concert in Disneyland (Resort) Paris, how did this came about?
Mark; A promoter organized a festival in Disneyland where he was going to play with his band, and with Within Temptation as the headliner. To make the bridge between his death metal band and Within Temptation he came to EPICA. Within Temptation was a good choice for this event as it fitted within the Disneyland concept because of its “fairy tale Metal” as it is sometimes called. As EPICA isn’t that far away from that kind of music we where added ask to be on the festival.

Is there a big difference in the preparation of the festival at Disneyland compared to another show?
Simone; During a festival you’re not hanging around the stage the whole time, you come in about 2 hours before to do your sound check while with another show you will be at the venue most of the day preparing for the event. The difference is that the next day we where invited to visit Disneyland which was fun, unfortunately it was raining that day, but still fun.

How was the public, response, at Disneyland? Was this different?
Mark; I think most of the people at the festival came for the music and might not have visited Disneyland so the crowd was the same as we get to see at most festivals we play at. For me it was nice to have the opportunity to visit the park afterwards as we are not in that neighborhood a lot. We, Simone and me, have been there before to visit the park with enough time to visit everything. However we where queue-ing for one ride and when we where almost there the informed us it was not working anymore. I think this was Space Mountain.
Simone; It was the rollercoaster indoor, yes, Space Mountain. When we where at the front of the queue they told us the attraction was broken.

What hotel did you stay in back then?
Simone; That was that Mexican one (Santa Fe)
Mark; The cheapest one of the resort (laughs)

Favorite attraction at the park
Simone: Phantom Manor

…So is mine
Mark; I love roller coasters. The one that goes backwards was fun

Indiana Jones et le Temple du Péril. (that now goes forwards again)

What was the nicest memory of the (festival) weekend at Disneyland?
Simone; The signing session. It was the first time that people started to come to us and one of the first times somebody came up to me and told me “I love you”. This was a nice surprising reaction of the fans and it can be counted as one of our first successful shows abroad.
Mark; And I loved the combination of a nice day of work and a free day at the park. It made it a special weekend.

Have you been back since?
Mark; No we haven’t
Simone; Maybe to Walt Disney World next. But we are not playing in Florida (on the US tour).

Who know, maybe with Kamelot, as they are from Florida.
Mark; Who knows, but it is not in the tour plan of this trip

Simone, Mark told me you’re a big Disney fan and that you know all the Disney movies by heart.
Simone; (laughs), no not all of them.

What is your favorite Disney Movie?
Simone; “Snow White”, “Cinderella”, “Pocahontas”. All of the films have something special, but more specific I would say the older movies. The more resent movies could not be counted towards my favorite list.

Favorite Character? The one you would compare yourself with
Simone; (Laughter) “The little Mermaid” (Both Mark and Simone are laughing)

I did not see that one coming. (laughter)
Simone; Yes, that is also one of my favorite Disney movies
Mark; What is her name; Ariel?
Simone; Yes, Ariel…
Mark; just to show that I also know something about the Disney movies…
Simone (to Mark) then name me the names of the 7 dwarfs… (Laughter). I especially like the music in the Disney movies, the fairytale music from movies like “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty”.
Mark; My favorite Disney Movie is “The Lion King”
Simone; Yes, that is also a nice one. Another one I forgot. Actually I like them all (haha)
Mark, “The Lion King” is one of these movies that could set a link to EPICA, a film like this would be something EPICA could write music too. This could be one of those links (between Disney and EPICA). I am a big fan of Hans Zimmer, the man that wrote the music to “The Lion King”, but also “Gladiator” and “The Da Vinci Code”. It is something I would love to do with EPICA, producing the music for a big movie.

I’ve also seen you (Simone) wear “A Nightmare Before Christmas” T-shirt on several occasion. Another link between Disney and Gothic?
Simone; It is especially Tim Burton I am a big fan of. I also like his movie “Corpse Bride”. Again it is the combination of the music and the fairytale I love, but this time the darker side of the fairytale. He has a very special style that I really like. Not so long ago I bought a second copy of the “A Nightmare Before Christmas” DVD in case I would loose the first copy or if it would get damaged from playing so often.
Mark; You can give the first copy to me… (laughs)

EPICA also has a soundtrack called “The Score”. How did this come about?
Mark; A couple of years ago I was asked to write the music for a Dutch movie. It took them a couple of years before they could finance the movie. Once we started to work on the soundtrack me and Yves Huts, who had a big involvement in the project, had so much inspiration that we got a lot more music then needed for the movie. Because of that we came up with “The Score”. We had no big hopes for this, it was just a dream to make a soundtrack, but the reaction and success was enormous so we decided that we will get a follow up on this in the future. This time however we would involve Simone and the chorus, making it a bigger production as our first soundtrack.

I loved “The Score”, but I did miss Simone on it. (Simone was only on a couple of tracks on the CD)
Mark; This will change on the second soundtrack
Simone; but then with more atmospheric vocals and not so much of the songs we usually compose. Not the EPICA songs, but more atmospheres, not something for headbanging.
Mark; but not just atmosphere, there will be more songs on it than on the previous soundtrack.
Simone; So there will be a lot of work waiting for me then (laughs)
Mark; Hahaha. Yes, a lot of hard work in the upcoming period.

Like mentioned before, you’re (Mark) a big fan of Hans Zimmer, the man who wrote “The Lion King and now “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”. How big is his influence on your work?
Mark; I guess a lot as I listen his music a lot, like the “King Arthur” soundtrack, this is one of my favorite Hans Zimmer soundtracks. I also listen a lot to the “Gladiator” and also “The Lion King”. I think his work influences our atmospheric parts we use in our music. I cannot say exactly how this is influenced our work while listening to him, how it translate to our music, but there is always some influence.

For Disney fans who do not know your music “The Score” might be a good first step to come and know EPICA?
Mark; Yes, I think Disney fans who do not know us should maybe start with “The Score”. After that they could make the jump to the “harder” work.

Can you already give us some information on the new album?
Mark; The next album will be a concert album with long musical numbers in the style of “Consign to Oblivion” of the Consign to Oblivion album. The song will be longer and more epic.
Simone; It will also be more complex, with more extremes and some new elements. Listeners might need to put the new CD on a couple of times before they will understand the music and story. It will have to grown on them and after listening to it a couple of times it will sound better and better.

I for sure am looking forwards to it. Is there a release date?
Mark; We will be recording it near the end of 2006. We will be working hard to have a release somewhere in spring 2007. Still a little while before the next CD will be available.
Simone; But we might already start to play one or two songs once they are ready
Mark; And first we will have our new DVD released and we just released the audio CD book “The Road to Paradiso”.

And the book is a big success.
Mark; Yes, it is unbelievable. It got to place 46 in the music top 100, because of the CD with the book it was added to the rankings. We never expected to rank that high with the book. Many people say they don’t expect something, but we really didn’t expect this. When it entered on place 86 we celebrated it already, thinking the next week it would be out of the top 100 but instead of that it pushed thru to the 46th place

It is a great book, including a picture of my (6 year old) son in it (laughter)
Simone; It is a very nice book, glossy paper, good quality. I never expected that after such a short career we already would get such a nice book. It is amazing to have this book to be able to look back at the things we have done on this short career. It is something we can be proud of if we see all the things we have accomplished so far.
If you would have to complete the following sentences what would you say? “Gothic and Disney fit together because….”
Simone: … there are many gothic fans who love Disney. There are also conformity in gothic and Disney music, not just because of Tim Burton (Nightmare before Christmas, Corpse Bride), but also because of elements like fairy tales, the atmosphere, the darkness. Every Disney fairy tale has its darkness, it monster that is part of the story, just like Gothic. Good and evil…
Mark: Beauty and the Beast…
Simone; …and you are the beauty (laughs)
Mark; That speaks for itself (laughter)

“Disney fans should listen to an EPICA CD because…”
Mark; to enrich their world… With some explanation what I mean by this. Because I think that many people who do not know us yet will find many things in our music that they will find beautiful. I hear a lot that people think EPICA is to rough and that it is not intended for them. But once they hear it they might think completely different. I would say spontaneous listen to it with an open mind.

Thank you both for your time.

You can listen to some short pieces of their music here.

Click on the albums to see a full list of their work.

EPICA Are Simone Simons (Vocals), Mark Jansen (Guitars, grunts & screams), Ad Sluijter (Guitars), Jeroen Simons (Drums), Coen Janssen (Synths and piano) and Yves Huts (Bass guitar)

This entry was posted on Friday, June 16th, 2006 at 11:29 am and is filed under Disney Movies, Disney in General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.