Metal & High Heels recently conducted an interview with guitarist Isaac Delahaye of Dutch symphonic metal giants EPICA. You can watch the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On whether EPICA‘s productivity in the studio comes naturally:

Isaac: “It kind of comes naturally. We’ve always liked the challenge here and there [of making new albums] and also like to do something out of the box. That was the reason we did this [recent ‘Epica Vs Attack On Titan Songs’ EP]. As far as the EP goes, ‘The Solace System’, basically all of the songs were recorded together with ‘The Holographic Principle’. We had 27 songs to start with, cut them down to 18, of which 12 ended up on ‘The Holographic Principle’ and the other six ended up on ‘The Solace System’. So the EP and the album are like one big album. They are all recorded at the same time, same studio, same producer. We just had a very hard time to decide which songs of those 18 would be on the album. That’s why we thought it would be better to keep the six other songs together as one EP instead of giving one to Amazon, one for iTunes, one for Japan, whatnot. That’s something we’ve done in the past. These songs are not B-songs or worthless songs. In our minds, better to keep them together and release them so everyone can actually listen to them and they don’t need to buy six different versions or something like that. Yeah, it’s like one big album.”

On EPICA‘s approach to social media:

Isaac: “It’s mostly band and management, but of course, we have people on the team to make sure that whenever we are on the road and stuff has to be out there, that everything is taken care of. Basically, we have an assistant manager who’s pretty much doing all the social media stuff as far as the planning of what comes when. Because you don’t want to send people too much, but you also don’t want to keep your mouth shut for too long, especially nowadays with all the geo-targeting and stuff like that, you can post every day with multiple things without interfering in people’s inboxes. It’s something which is very interesting, of course. Yeah, whatever we do, we try to look at ways of not always doing the same thing twice. Of course, the end-of-the-show picture will always be posted after the show, but as far as the videos go, you can do the same video ten times, but that’s why we thought it would be cool this anime-styled video and not everyone likes it. Some people are ‘Oh, this is garbage.’ At least it’s better than nothing. We do like it. It’s not like we put a million-dollar budget into that, but it’s for new content and for people to know that we’re still around. I think it’s a good thing. Yeah, other than that, we have people doing all the flyers, we have a guy who is only responsible for the web site, that it works, then we have someone who is responsible for how it looks and all of that. It’s something we, as a band, we want it to look that way or do this or that, then other people take care of that. Everything comes down to the artwork, which is controlled by the band. We say what it should look like. Photoshoots, which is the same thing, basically all of that, is the basic structure for whatever will come next. It should blend together. It should as if you’re having one big style and then you do whatever you want to do with that style. That’s how we look at it.”

On his thoughts on Spotify:

Isaac: “It’s different times and the same question. You had Napster back in the day. You have YouTube, Spotify, Deezer, all these kind of things. Music is evolving and it’s a creative thing. People will always listen to music. Yeah, maybe these days, people see it as something you can throw away easy. You just take the music for free. If you like it, you keep it. If you don’t like it, you throw it away, you change it for another song. Yeah, it’s kind of evolving and the whole industry around it is evolving. But you know, who am I to say it’s the wrong way?”

EPICA recently completed “The Ultimate Principle” North American tour with LACUNA COIL as co-headliners. INSOMNIUM and ELANTRIS provided direct support.

EPICA is continuing to tour in support of “The Solace System”, which was released on September 1 via Nuclear Blast. The disc was recorded, mixed and mastered by Joost van den Broek and Jacob Hansen.