Coen Janssen, a native of the Netherlands, is doing his best to talk up his home country’s musical bona fides, with limited success.
“You must have heard of Within Temptation. …”
“You must have heard The Gathering. …”
“Maybe Gorefest. …”
“You’ve probably heard of Nightwish — their singer is from Holland, as well.”
“These EDM DJs are amongst the best in the world. …”
The thing is, if not for Golden Earring’s “Radar Love” in 1973 and “Twilight Zone” in 1982, you might not be familiar with any Dutch music at all.
The band in which Janssen is a keyboardist just might be the one to get the western European country of about 17 million people on your musical radar.
You must have heard of Epica …
And if you haven’t, there’s a chance you soon will. The Dutch symphonic metal group have been steadily building an international following since their formation in 2002. They’re now on the North American leg of their headlining “Ultimate Principle Tour,” including a stop at The Complex in Salt Lake City on Saturday.
“It’s cool to be one of the main musical export products from the Netherlands,” Janssen told The Salt Lake Tribune in a phone interview.
The band’s sound features anthemic, high-energy, riff-driven metal along with dramatic orchestral flourishes, futuristic electronic accents, and the contrasting vocals of Simone Simons’ operatic soprano and guitarist Mark Jansen’s secondary death grunts.
It’s a combination that’s raised some eyebrows along the way.
“People tend to think that we are a soft-rock band, with a female vocalist and keyboards added. But we like to be believe that our style still deserves the title of ‘metal,’ ” Janssen said. “We’re kinda uptempo and extreme. And I think in our live sets, you can also really experience that, because we like to play the heavier songs and the more extreme songs live.”
The underlying structure of the group’s sound has remained more or less consistent over 15 years, though it could be argued Epica took a slightly more progressive turn after its first two albums.
Beyond that, the majority of the evolution of the music, up until recently, has mostly come through the musicians getting better at what they do.
“I guess the thing is that we all grew up, and we’re not 20 years old anymore. We’ve gained a lot of experience on the road, and also as musicians,” Janssen said. “So I think we’ve had a naturally evolving sound, and our music gets better every time. At least we try to.”
Epica’s most recent full-length album, 2016’s “The Holographic Principle,” meanwhile, illustrates the band members’ individual growth and the band’s growing success.
(Photo courtesy Tim Tronckoe) Epica keyboardist Coen Janssen said the band tries “to have as much fun as possible. That’s basically it. It’s all about having a good time and a party, and not being too serious. You have to have a good performance, but also a lot of fun, otherwise it’s kinda boring.”
Its predecessor, 2014’s “The Quantum Enigma,” and its accompanying tour did well enough that the musicians could finally afford to bring their ultimate vision of the follow-up to life in the studio.
“The first lineup we had, we didn’t really have a solo guitarist, and now we do, so we try to exploit that as much as possible. But now we also have the financial means to hire an actual orchestra during recording recordings, so our sound really gets more deep,” Janssen said. “[On ‘The Holographic Principle’], we didn’t actually use any computer-generated sounds, only real instruments. And most them we played ourselves, like percussion, and little extras you hear, like funny guitars and mandolins and stuff we did ourselves. I think that makes the sound become much more alive than with the usual samples. Everyone can buy them and they can work very well, but nothing is better than the real deal. … As a beginning band, there’s no way you can afford it, because it takes a lot of studio time, which costs a lot of money, and extra people to pay to come and play those kind of things. So we’re very happy that we can do that.”
The other big change with Epica now is that the musicians’ growth has spawned more creativity and stimulated some prolific writing sessions.
The end result has been their ability to be more picky about what does and does not deserve to make an album.
“This time around, the big difference was that we had 26, 27 songs to choose from, because everybody was really inspired in a way, so everybody wrote a lot of songs. … It was like a luxury thing,” Janssen said. “So I think the biggest change was just that we had a lot of stuff to choose from, and we could choose the best stuff.”
A few more of those tracks recently came to light as “The Solace System,” a six-song EP released Sept. 1.
What it all adds up to, in the end, is making Epica’s concerts a fun time.
And in a genre known for often being overly serious, that can sometimes be as hard to find as, say, a Dutch metal band you’re familiar with.
“I think it’s an overall cool experience. We try to have as much fun as possible. That’s basically it. It’s all about having a good time and a party, and not being too serious,” Janssen said. “You have to have a good performance, but also a lot of fun, otherwise it’s kinda boring. I think you’re in for a treat. … I only can urge you to come see the show in Salt Lake City. It’s gonna be a blast!”
Epica<br>With Lacuna Coil, Insomnium, Elantris<br>When • Saturday, 6 p.m.<br>Where • The Complex (The Grand), 536 W. 100 South, Salt Lake City<br>Tickets • $25; Smith’s Tix
