Dutch symphonic metallers EPICA recently entered Sandlane Recording Facilities in Rijen, Netherlands with producer Joost Van Den Broek to record their new album. The follow-up to 2016's "The Holographic Principle" is once again being produced by Joost Van Den Broek (POWERWOLF, AYREON). The recording sessions for EPICA's new disc are being filmed by Panda Productions, which has shared the second studio vlog via the band's YouTube channel. In support of the new album, EPICA will comprehensively tour Europe during the "Epic Apocalypse" co-headline tour with APOCALYPTICA and support act WHEEL. Last October, EPICA guitarist Mark Jansen told That Drummer Guy that there was a simple explanation for why the band has taken this long to begin work on new material. "It's three years ago that 'The Holographic Principle' got released, so by the time the new album gets released, yeah, that must be about four years," he said. "It's longer than usual, but in the meantime, we also released an EP, and a second EP, and also this ['Design Your Universe'] re-release, and also a book — we worked on a book. So there's a lot of stuff still that happened in the meantime. But if you just take a look at the albums, then it's longer than it usually has been. So I think the fans are really eager to hear new material. And as eager are we about writing the stuff. "When I started writing myself, I felt really a big motivation again to write a new album," he continued. "And that's exactly what we needed. We didn't want to start writing an album at the point that we felt like we just had to write an album. We only want to write an album when we really feel hungry to write an album. And that's the case now… It has to be one hundred percent or nothing; there's nothing in between. I wouldn't be happy with an album that has just a few good songs and the rest are fillers. I would feel ashamed about it. There's no one that's gonna be happy about such an album. It has to be as good as we can get it." Lat fall, EPICA celebrated the 10th anniversary of its milestone album "Design Your Universe". To mark this special occasion, EPICA re-released this fan-favorite LP as a "gold edition" on October 4 through Nuclear Blast. This edition contains the album remixed and remastered by Joost Van Den Broek with updated artwork and a second disc containing newly recorded acoustic versions of "Design Your Universe" songs. November 2019 saw the release of "The Essence Of Epica", a lavishly designed and fully illustrated, high-quality hardback which tells the story of EPICA in bandmembers' own words. The book is available in two distinct editions: the Classic is a 208-page, hardback with foil detailing, filled with over 200 images; the Signature hardback is signed by the band and comes in a deluxe clamshell box with three exclusive, original art prints created by Stefan Heilemann.
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