To conclude our series on the women of symphonic metal, we sit and talk to the legendary vocalist Simone Simons from the band Epica, about the process of creating “Omega”, the bands most ambitious release to date. She talk about how a break was needed from touring and the time she gets to spend being a mother, the struggle to get back into a song writing flow during the Covid-19 era and the hopes for the new release going forward. Our conversation gets into a band that actually takes stock in all they have accomplished over the past 2 decades.
Simone chats about going deeper into the vlogs for the recording for "Omega"
"We started doing them for the last record, but this time we went more in-depth. We
found out the fans really like them. The digital content is a big factor and a lot of the fans like
the extras. I had to record my video footage by myself because no one was there. I was singing
in a recording booth with my producer live on my tablet. There was no videographer accept for me. LOL. I didn’t have a lot of time to do that because recording vocals is a very tiring process. Its still a lot of fun for me to watch those vlogs. We all live in different places so its a change to experience what it would be like to be in the recording studio in the Netherlands."
She adds:
"Omega is a continuation of the “Holographic Principal” where everything comes together. The balance in life, the balance between light and dark, the balance between ourselves, both good and evil, trying to restore that balance. Mark and I drew inspiration for this out of the emerald tablets some of the oldest wisdom stones known to mankind. “Rivers” is a very personal song, but also a metaphor for the flow of life, the ebb and tides, and that sometimes we need to swim against the stream when we feel like we’re drown-ing within ourselves. “The Absence of Time” is the battle between light and darkness, spiritual freedom when the demiurge is trying to keep the soul imprisoned. “Kingdom of Heaven” is the third part of the Kingdom of Heaven trilogy. It doesn’t mean the end of Epica. It just means the end of the trilogy, where science and neutrality come together to find the true meaning of life, which is a recurring theme throughout the lyrics on the record."
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